Into the Woods
by Belphegor
Summary: Granted, the mission – picking up a few downed flyers – wasn't exactly supposed to be a nice stroll through the German countryside in the first place, but Newkirk, LeBeau and Carter could have done without the exploding bridges...
1. Just Another Rhumba

**Author's note**: I can't believe I'm posting my fourth _Hogan's Heroes_ story (if indeed the _Stalag by Starlight_ snippets count as one) when four months ago I believed I would never be able to write anything again. Goes to show you should never listen to your inner drama queen! And I still find it completely unbelievable that _Soul Food_ got nominated for the Papa Bear Awards – and in the "Best story of 2011"! Thank you _so_ much. I mean, really. Saying it made me happy would be like saying the Atlantic is slightly wet :o)

I can't shake the habit of using song titles for chapters, and the 1930s are such a gold mine in terms of fantastic songs that it was too tempting not to dig into it. So the first chapter title is courtesy of George and Ira Gershwin, who wrote it in 1937.

Thanks a lot to Emily, as usual. You're the best :o]

_Disclaimer: I own exactly five characters (six, if you count Puss in Boots) mentioned in this chapter. The rest is property of (I guess) CBS, and possibly the surviving family of Bing Crosby._

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 1: Just Another Rhumba**_

All in all, Sergeant Ronald Dickins reflected as he looked down at the ground far below his feet and up at the tree he was currently hanging from, this whole thing could have gone a lot better.

Of course, it could have gone a lot worse, too – he could have been killed, and while he knew it wouldn't mean the end of the world, per se, for _him_ it certainly would. After all, when you die, whether you believe what they tell you in church or not, you can't see your mates and your family again, you can't go to the pub and buy a round, or go to the movies and everything, so your world good as ends, right?

For the moment, though, Dickins felt very much alive; the dry, hot August night air was starting to make him sweat, his shoulders were aching from the pull of the parachute, and something was itching like mad under his right foot.

"Right," he said aloud, if only to hear something else than the creaks of the trees, the rustling of the leaves and the weird little noises you just aren't used to when you hardly ever left Chillingham Street, Liverpool. "Anybody here but me?"

If his parachute hadn't been so well stuck in that tree, Dickins would have fallen to the ground in surprise when a voice hissed back, "Quieter, Sergeant. The Krauts might hear you."

Dickins had never been so glad to hear a Manchester accent. It meant that Squadron Leader Bannister was nearby, and right now he could heartily forgive him his city of origin. For a Scouser, Mancs were the natural enemy, right after the French and the Germans.

"Is there a patrol nearby, then, sir?"

"I don't think so, but let's be cautious. Where are you?" A pause. "Dickins, are you stuck in a _tree_?"

"Um, yessir."

"Which one?"

"The one that's got a parachute in it. Those trees all look the same to me, sir."

He heard a sigh.

"Sergeant, can you reach your knife?"

"Oh." _Right._ "Right away, sir."

One painful tumble – during which he got closely acquainted with what seemed like every possible branch on the bloody tree – and one equally painful thud later, Sergeant Dickins was standing before his commanding officer, brushing leaves and dirt from his uniform and gazing about with interest at their surroundings.

"Did you find the others, sir?"

"McBride is out reconnoitring. We'll proceed to the Underground rendezvous point as soon as he's back."

Dickins' mouth suddenly went dry. "What about Flight Sergeant Murray and Corporal Berkowitz?"

Squadron Leader Alec Bannister was a terse, sharp-tongued man at the best of times, and now clearly was not the best of times.

"We'll meet them there if they haven't been taken," he said curtly.

Dickins barely refrained from asking what would happen to them if they had been. No sense asking questions you already know the answer to, after all.

A slight rustle to his left announced the arrival of Flight Lieutenant McBride, who looked none the worse for wear after his landing, not one close-cropped red hair sticking out, uniform as impeccable as ever. He could have been back at Farnborough airfield sipping a cup of tea – except he did look paler than usual under his freckles.

"Sir," he said calmly, snapping a short salute, "Murray and Berkowitz have been taken by an enemy patrol."

"Alive?" Bannister asked sharply.

"Unharmed, as far I could tell."

Dickins breathed out. Bannister nodded.

"Good. Maybe we'll be able to come back for them later. Our priority, though, is to reach the rendezvous point –" he unfolded a map while McBride provided a small torch, "– here. Now, we were just north of Hammelburg before we got shot down – that's _there_ – and the wind isn't too strong, so my guess is we aren't too far. A few hours' walk southwest and we'll meet them."

"Meet who, sir?" Dickins asked, catching a meaningful glance between the two officers. It was McBride who answered, as expressionless as always.

"An Underground team who'll send us back to England if we can reach them. Their code name," he added, only continuing after Bannister silently allowed him to, "is Papa Bear."

Dickins' eyes went round. "Papa Bear? _The_ Papa Bear? I thought the guys were having me on! Thought it was some legend going 'round the airfield!"

"Well, it's not," Bannister said, picking up his parachute bag. "And you're about to meet them. But, Sergeant?"

"Yessir?"

"Do me a favour, would you, and don't ask for their autograph. It's strictly classified. Not to mention dashed embarrassing."

Perhaps a lesser man would have taken offence, Dickins reflected. He decided on a good-natured shrug.

"No problem, sir. I'll settle for a ticket home."

No words were exchanged after that while they traipsed through the trees, but as he trailed after Flight Lieutenant McBride, Dickins couldn't help wondering what kind of code name was _Papa Bear_, and who on Earth picked it in the first place.

* * *

><p>"So that's your mission for tonight, fellas." Colonel Hogan paused and took a minute to survey his men. "Any questions?"<p>

"Yeah, I got one – what kind of code name is 'Puss in Boots'?" Carter asked, a thoughtful look on his face. "I mean, it sounds kind of – kind of –"

"Don't worry, Carter," Newkirk retorted, crossing his arms with a deadpan look on his face. "Next time there's a war, I'm sure they'll ask you pick the code names."

LeBeau hid his grin behind his mug of coffee, privately noting that the slight but noticeable tension that usually hung in the air right before a mission – any mission – went down a notch. It was nice to know that you could always count on those two for a well-timed, necessary bit of comedy to alleviate the tension; sometimes it felt as though he was at the cinema, watching _La Grande Illusion_ with some Laurel and Hardy sketches thrown in for good measure.

As usual, the sarcasm flew well over Carter's head – unless he just decided to ignore it and keep what suited him. He answered the Englishman's smirk with a grin.

"I _mean_ any question that's actually relevant to the downed airmen we're picking up, and I don't think it includes new Underground code names," Hogan said with just the right amount of warning in his voice. "Now, if –"

He was interrupted by Kinch climbing out of the tunnel under the bunk bed with a serious look on his face.

"Colonel," he said as everybody in the barracks turned to look at him, "two of the downed airmen have just been captured by a patrol – I intercepted their signal. They're bringing them here for questioning."

That made Hogan stop in his tracks to think. LeBeau could almost see the cogs turning as he digested this new bit of information.

"That B-26 that got shot down, London did say it was a five men crew, right? So it leaves us with three guys who must be making way to rendezvous point P–05 right now, assuming they're not hurt or anything." He was wearing the keen, calculating look in his eyes he got when he was coming up with a plan – or trying to, at the very least. "Okay. We'll still proceed as planned. Newkirk, Carter and LeBeau, you'll pick up the guys and take them here. They'll need fitting up for the trip back. Be as quick as possible, and try not to miss roll call. Yes, Newkirk – put your hand down, you're not in class – what d'you want to know?"

"Well, what if there's a snag and we do miss roll call, Colonel?" Newkirk asked, equal parts cheek and genuine apprehension if LeBeau knew him at all.

Hogan stared at him, poker-faced.

"That's what I like about you, Newkirk. You always see the glass half full." It _was_ a pretty good point, though, and the men were still looking at him, so he went on. "We'll think of something. Just be sure to come back in one piece, and don't talk to strange men along the way."

"Except for English flyers," Carter pointed out, covering a mutter from Newkirk that sounded suspiciously like "Yes, Mum."

Hogan nodded, the grin that wasn't quite showing on his face dancing in his eyes. "Except for English flyers. Now, you all got your fake dog tags? Jack McPhearson, Antonio Cavelli and François Maillet?"

The three of them held up the dog tags. Carter looked at his with a slightly wistful expression.

"Yes, sir. 'Cept I would have liked to be McPhearson again. I kinda like the sound of that name."

"Carter, you were McPhearson last time – you gotta learn to share with the other kids. Besides, that way LeBeau can pass as Canadian, and Newkirk can pull off a Scottish accent."

LeBeau, who had heard a Québécois speak exactly once before, and briefly at that, carefully avoided mentioning that French and Québec accents sounded nothing alike. With a bit of luck, if they were indeed caught, the Germans would never have seen a real Canadian before, let alone heard one speak.

Carter shrugged. "I mean, I only know 'Buon giorno'. I'm not gonna go very far with just one word."

"Let's hope you don't have to use it, then," said LeBeau, putting down his mug and heading for the tunnel.

Before he had both feet on the ladder, he heard Newkirk say (almost) seriously, "You know, Andrew, if that makes you feel better, I think 'buon giorno' is two words."

"Really?"

* * *

><p>Sneaking out of camp in the dead of night, no matter how often they got to do it and how routine it got, never failed to make Newkirk's heart beat faster. Of course it was dangerous to the point of insanity, and of course it was for a mission (as opposed to slightly less serious outings where a lovely little Fräulein was involved), but there was something about being on the right side of the barbed wire that always felt good – and <em>right<em>.

Even the air they breathed when they climbed out of the hollowed-out tree stump tasted better. But that was probably due to the stifling heat that made everybody slightly jealous of Kinch and Baker, the only two men who, as radio operators, had a good excuse to stay down in the tunnels, where it was marginally more bearable.

The trio quickly retreated to the safety of a nearby thicket, far enough from the camp borders to avoid detection by the odd patrolling guard.

"Right," whispered Newkirk, "let's take a look at the map. Carter, get the torch."

"The what?" Carter frowned, looking confused. "Look, I don't even have a lighter – what do you need a torch for?"

LeBeau shook his head, chuckling. "'Divided by a common language'. He means the flashlight, Carter."

"Oh – right."

Carter turned on the small lamp, Newkirk unfolded the map and LeBeau craned his neck to look.

"Think the quickest way is along the road – not too close, mind," the Englishman amended, "and then across the Adolf Hitler bridge right there."

"Say, didn't we blow this one up in February? _And_ May?" Carter asked with a wide, slow smile, as though Newkirk had mentioned an old friend he hadn't heard of in ages. Newkirk shrugged.

"How should I know? They named half the bridges in the bloomin' country after that barmy bastard. Sometimes it feels like all we ever do is blow up Adolf Hitler bridges."

"Well, not tonight anyway," LeBeau piped up, still peering at the map. "We need it to be standing when we cross it. Good thing they rebuilt it again."

"So we can blow it up later." Carter's eyes lit up with the peculiar enthusiasm explosives always brought up in him. Sometimes it unnerved Newkirk a little. Just a little.

"Andrew, has it ever occurred to you that you're a funny sort of fellow?"

"Jack Benny funny or 'Don't be funny' funny?"

"… Never mind."

Both map and lamp went back inside their respective owners' jackets, and the three men started walking, grateful for the breath of wind on their faces, however slight it was. Newkirk caught himself thinking they probably had it better than the others; granted, they would probably be out for the major part of the night, but at least they wouldn't be crammed with a dozen other men in too-close quarters, gasping in the dry heat and trying in vain to get some sleep.

Maybe thanking the airmen for getting shot down would be a little bit bad taste, though.

The distant but closing sound of a motor made them freeze in their tracks; they dropped to the ground and lay there for a full minute, hardly daring to breathe.

"Did you see who that was?" LeBeau whispered when the forest fell silent again – or as silent as Bavarian wildlife could get. Newkirk shook his head.

"No. Sounded like a car, though."

"Are you sure it wasn't a truck?"

"Didn't sound big enough for a truck," Carter put in, still looking in the direction of the road that stretched somewhere behind the copse of trees. "Besides, Schultz only comes back from his furlough with the new truck tomorrow morning, right?"

"Only if he doesn't stop for breakfast in Fuchsstadt." LeBeau smirked. "If he does, he'll probably be back in camp in time for lunch. Or dinner."

Newkirk stood up quickly, brushing dirt off the front of his uniform. "Forget Schultz – _I_'d like to be back in camp for breakfast," he said evenly. "Let's pick up these flyers and get back home." His words belatedly registered, and he shook his head, adding fervently, "And I just can't believe I said that."

They started off toward the bridge again, careful to make as little noise as possible; after four or five minutes Carter's voice broke the silence, making the other two jump out of their skin.

"You're right, though, it does feel like it sometimes."

"Who's right? What does?" asked Newkirk, turning around to the American in order to properly glare at him through the dark, his heart still pounding. He hated being startled like that.

Carter shrugged, completely unruffled. "The camp. I mean, I know it's a prison, and boy do I miss my family and everything, but it's almost kinda like a home now. 'Specially with you guys."

Newkirk opened his mouth to offer a sarcastic retort, but for once decided against it. The American's candid honesty usually brought out the old cynicism in him, but every once in a while it just plain disarmed him. He was perfectly aware that wild horses couldn't drag such a comment from him, because God forbid Peter Newkirk should ever say something maudlin or likewise damaging to his reputation … Why Carter seemed completely fine blurting out things like that was beyond him, but oddly, they didn't feel wrong coming from him, as such. Probably something to put down to cultural differences.

He glanced at LeBeau – who had been staring at Carter with an odd look on his face as well as the hint of a smile – and saw his own thoughts reflected in the dark eyes. _No surprise there. _

In the end, he looked back at Carter, tilted his head a little and said with his usual crooked grin, "Andrew, that's either awfully nice of you to say that, or incredibly disturbing."

"Thanks," Carter said uncertainly, "I think."

"Don't think about it too much," LeBeau said with a grin as they started walking towards the bridge they could finally make out behind the trees. "Newkirk just doesn't know how to pay a compliment."

"Oh, because that was a compliment? Gee, I would never have guessed."

Newkirk snorted, biting back an unsavoury comment. _If I didn't know for certain Carter's typically impervious to sarcasm … _

They stopped for a second when they finally got to the bridge – the area surrounding it was mostly open ground, and they would lose precious cover from the trees for a little while – and Carter prudently walked up to inspect the masonry. "Now that's a sweet little bridge. I hope they rename it when the war's over, though."

"Assuming we haven't blown it up – again," muttered LeBeau from his spot near the trees where Newkirk and him were keeping an eye out for patrols. Newkirk grinned.

"They'll probably rebuild it again. Hey, who knows, maybe they'll name it after Cart—"

The world exploded.

No, not the world, pointed out a small part of Newkirk's brain that was still functioning while he was thrown to the ground by the blast, half-blinded by the sudden glare and the roar in his ears got so loud it filled his whole head.

Just their own little part of it. Or possibly just Germany.

It took him what felt like ages to be able to move even just a finger again. His head seemed to weigh about as much as Tower Bridge and it occurred to him that it was probably not a good thing that everything he could see when he could crack his eyes open was shaky and blurry, like a child's drawing.

He suddenly became aware that somebody was gripping his shoulder; the hold was strong but shaking badly.

"Pierre! Ça va? Réponds! Combien j'ai de doigts? Pierre!"

His eyes finally gained a bit of focus, and he realised LeBeau was crouching next to him, dishevelled and pale as a ghost under a layer of dirt. His beret was gone and he looked about as bad as Newkirk felt.

"Oi, stop yer bloody nattering, or do it in a language I understand," he groaned, trying to get his jumbled thoughts to make sense again. This answer seemed to reassure the Frenchman, who closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath.

"Nom de Dieu."

"Yeah, you can say that again."

_If we'd been just a little closer …_

Ice seized him up to his throat at about the same second LeBeau's eyes popped open again and locked on to his, filled with the same mounting hair-raising horror Newkirk felt growing in his gut. The still-burning ruins of the bridge drew both gazes as though of their own accord, and both men whispered the same word – essentially.

"Andrew …"

"André …?"

* * *

><p><span>Translationsnotes:

_Ça va? Réponds! Combien j'ai de doigts?_: Literally, "Are you okay? Answer (me)! How many fingers do I have?"

_Nom de Dieu_: "name of God", literally; equivalent in terms of language to "bloody hell".

_La Grande Illusion_ is a 1937 war drama about a small group of French POWs trying to escape during World War 1. There are no bad guys in the film – both Allied and German officers are depicted as human beings who have their own duty to accomplish – and at the heart of the film is the idea that nationalism and racism are a profound mistake, as what separates people (nationality, religion, culture, class) can also bring them together. It was a great success at the time, until the Nazis banned it from cinemas when they invaded France, and it remains one of the great classics of French cinema.

French and Canadian French accents, speech patterns and idioms are _wildly_ different. Scottish accent/Texan accent different :o)

Next part next week! Hope you liked :o]


	2. Pick Yourself Up

**Author's note**: Don't worry, I wouldn't kill off Carter – and certainly not in the first chapter :D I'd be too scared to be dragged off in front of Fanfic Court; since most judges and lawyers are from shows I didn't watch, I'd be completely lost and scared stiff :P

Anyway. _Pick Yourself Up_ is a rather lovely 1936 song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields; Diana Krall's version is one of my favourites. _You pick yourself up/Dust yourself off/And start all over again_ :o)

_Disclaimer: I own the crew of the _Lovely Joan_ – the B-26 that got shot down prior to the story – and that's about it. The rest is property of CBS and Bing Crosby; I'm just a wannabe writer who likes these characters a little too much._

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 2: Pick Yourself Up**_

Sergeant Dickins paused for a second to glance at his watch, because it was hard to keep an eye on both his wrist and his feet, and he didn't want to trip. Half an hour had passed since he had met with Squadron Leader Bannister and Flight Lieutenant McBride and got down from his tree, and it had only been five minutes since he had last checked the time.

It felt a lot longer.

The trees, bushes and ferns he was trudging through were completely foreign, but they reminded him a lot of the ones he'd seen during his training back home. It had been rather short – they were at war, after all, and they needed all the men they could get as fast as they could get them – but it had made a lasting impression on him.

Dickins had lost a good four or five pounds in the process, a head full of curls that were just starting to grow again, and a lot of illusions about war.

All the same, even after four successful missions and – perhaps more importantly – one failure, even as fear gnawed at his stomach (a different fear than the one he felt when he was manning his post in the nose of the plane, but a very cold, real fear nonetheless), his determination was still intact. They had to defeat the Jerries, and they had to protect the folks back home. Liverpool had been bombed during the Blitz, more heavily perhaps than any other English city besides London, and although his mum and dad's house was still standing and their letters hadn't mentioned any air raids since last year, the thought of his parents, his aunt Mildred and uncle Alfred and little cousin Richie, or old Mrs Collins next door being left without a home – or much, much worse – was enough to keep him going even when the going got tough.

The trees cleared, and Dickins spotted a low, grass-covered mound; on the other side, half-covered by bushes, was the opening of a small cave barely high enough for a man to stand on his knees. Bannister stopped, took off his cap and ran a hand in his short dark hair.

"Right – this is the place. Dickins, take a look around to reconnoitre, and be careful. McBride, help me with those bushes. Maybe we can arrange a better cover for the entrance."

"Yes, sir."

Dickins straightened the field service cap on his head and grabbed his pistol. It took all his self-control not to drop it when an intense light hit his eyes, immediately followed by a distant, but no less ear-splitting _boom_.

"Wh—what was that?" he yelped as Bannister and McBride ran up, weapons in hand. They were silent for a few minutes, eyes wide open in the dark. Bannister frowned.

"Whatever it was, it didn't come from a plane."

"What do you think exploded, sir?" asked McBride, the tension in his voice belying his calm demeanour.

"Too far west to be Hammelburg, at any rate, and unless the mapmaker boys back home need updates, there's no plant, no factory at all in this direction." He holstered his gun and started back to the mouth of the little cave. "Probably the local Underground bombing something small, like a bridge or summat."

"Didn't sound small to me," Dickins muttered, trying to slow down the pounding of his heart. Bannister gave a rare, small smirk.

"Perhaps somebody got a little over-enthusiastic with the dynamite. For the moment, though, it's none of our concern," he added, reverting to his usual brisk manner.

"Yes sir." Dickins tightened the hold on his gun – making sure his finger was not on the trigger – and walked into the woods, trying not to gulp too audibly.

_I really hope Murray and Berkowitz were nowhere near there_, he thought fervently. _Of all the nights to be messing about with explosives …_

* * *

><p>Flight Sergeant Jack E. Murray had not heard nor seen the bridge exploding. He was currently sitting with Corporal Berkowitz in the back of a German patrol car, with a Luger pointed towards his ribs, and since he was quite tall, his head bumped against the roof of the car with every pothole on the road. There was a great many of them.<p>

It was the second time he was captured. The first time had been two years ago; he had then managed to escape from Stalag 10 on a strange combination of sheer dumb luck and evasive action tactics. The perspective of pulling another fast one on the Krauts and the look of quiet terror in the young Corporal's eyes were what kept his boiling anger – and shame at having let himself be caught a second time – in check.

If there was fear somewhere in there, he flatly refused to acknowledge it.

An umpteenth bump in the road made his head bang against the ceiling again, and he breathed slowly through his nose, making an effort to unclench his fists.

"You know," he told the man who held him at gunpoint, in the calmest voice he could manage, "you really should be careful how you hold your gun. Another bump like that and you'll be scraping bits of prisoners off your officer's seats. And believe me, son, brains and blood make an unbelievable mess."

Berkowitz's face lost what colour it possessed, and Murray kicked his ankle lightly. The boy bit his lip, but to his credit continued to stare in the distance as steadily as though he'd heard an officer ask for a volunteer.

One of the NCO's most important rules – never volunteer for anything.

How old was the kid, anyway? Twenty-four, twenty-five at the most? He had been part of the crew of the _Lovely Joan_ for the last two missions, and apart from the fact that he was a bloody good gunner, Murray had not learned a lot about him. He was a quiet, hard-working young man who mostly kept to himself.

Dickins had been the one who had gradually got him to open up a bit. But then, Ronnie Dickins was one of the most open, friendly people he knew. If it wasn't for the fact that he tended to trip on his own two feet and blurt out things that made you want to slap him silly, he would make a damn good soldier.

The German soldier pointing the gun at Murray slowly shifted his hand, and while the muzzle was still digging in his ribs on occasions, at least it didn't look like it might accidentally go off. Berkowitz seemed to notice that, too, and imperceptibly relaxed.

Lights in the distance grew closer, and turned out to be searchlights behind a double wire fence. _Here we go again_.

"Remember, Corporal, name, rank and serial number only," he said in a low voice while Berkowitz stared at the fence and gulped.

As he got out of the car and stretched his body from head to toes – ignoring the various popping sounds from his back and knees – Murray took the opportunity to study his surroundings. This camp was smaller than Stalag 10, with not as many barracks, but it gave off the same impression: as though everything was there to impress upon newcomers that they were in prison now, useless to their country, and would remain so until the end of the war, whatever the outcome. It was the middle of the night, so he could not assess the physical and mental state of the prisoners; this would have to wait until later.

The German Lieutenant led Berkowitz and he up to the steps to the Kommandantur, where they waited a while until the door opened and a thin, balding man wearing a dressing gown and a – _a monocle?_ – peered at them, both face and pyjamas looking rumpled from recent sleep.

"Yes, yes, what is it?"

"Herr Kommandant," said the Lieutenant, saluting promptly, "we caught these Engländer in the woods near Hammelburg. Their plane was shot down, and we believe there may be more of them out there right now."

From the face the Kommandant was making – reminiscent of a man being treated to a healthy dose of turpentine – he could have done without the officer's zeal. But he nodded tiredly.

"Very well, Lieutenant. Bring them into my office."

Murray saw him repress a yawn, and barely refrained from smirking. The odds in their favour looked better now than they did just a few minutes ago.

The Lieutenant followed them inside the building, but once inside the Kommandant's office he saluted and said, "With your permission, Herr Kommandant, I will leave these two prisoners here and take my men to search the woods for the rest of the survivors, if there are any. I can take them off your hands tomorrow at eight, and we will take them to Gestapo headquarters to be processed."

The odds against a successful escape suddenly stacked higher. If they could not stay there …

The Kommandant saluted and dismissed him, leaving only two camp guards in the room with Murray and Berkowitz. He half-sat, half-slumped on a chair behind his desk and looked up at the two Englishmen, obviously still sleepy, but making an effort to be assertive but polite.

"My name is Colonel Wilhelm Klink, I am the Kommandant of Stalag 13, which is the toughest, most escape-proof prisoner of war camp in all of Germany, I am proud to say." And he did look proud. The blue eyes livened up slightly behind the monocle. "Now, who are you and what was your mission before you were shot down?"

Murray instantly assumed what he privately called 'the brick wall position': straight-backed, straight-faced and gazing into the far distance to give the impression nothing could penetrate a skull that thick. From the corner of his eye, he saw Berkowitz do the same.

"I asked you a question, Sergeant."

"Murray, Jack E., _Flight_ Sergeant, serial number 82050512."

"Oh, fine." Kommandant Klink leaned across his desk to look at Berkowitz. "It would be better for you to tell me what your mission was, you know. I can speak in your favour to the Gestapo tomorrow if you give me a few details. So, where –"

"Berkowitz, Eugene, Corporal, serial number 7909 –"

The boy's voice hardly shook. _Good show, lad_.

Klink made an impatient, dismissive gesture, and if Murray had any people-reading skills, he was finding this whole thing to be more trouble than it was worth and was itching to go back to bed.

"All right, all right, I know how this goes. But frankly, you're really being unreasonable. I could keep you in here all night for interrogation –" Hah! Perhaps if somebody else was doing the interrogation. So far, he was terrible at it. "So you had better – what?"

The door had opened, and a man walked in – an American colonel, by the look of his jacket and cap – as though it was completely normal for him to be there. Which was obviously not how Klink viewed things.

"Hogan, what are you doing here, out of your barrack after lights out? Have you looked at the time?"

"Actually, Kommandant, my watch stopped – d'you have the time?"

Murray was rather fascinated by the newcomer. His terrible posture, apparent laid-back and happy-go-lucky attitude and winning smile could be put down to typical fly boy manners – fighter pilots were the kings of the sky as far as they were concerned – but it was quite hard to reconcile this attitude with the man's rank.

Klink glanced at his watch mechanically, and then changed colour. His expression was a funny mix of anger, nervousness and a hint of desperation. "Hogan, all you need to know is that it's much too late for a prisoner to be out of the barracks. What brought you here anyway?"

Colonel Hogan gave the Kommandant a serious look – somewhat – and pointed a finger. "Tsk tsk, Kommandant, you know that according to the Geneva Convention the senior POW officer must be present when you interrogate new arrivals. You know that, I know that, so let's skip the pleasantries, hmm?" He turned to Murray and Berkowitz and flashed a bright smile that had a sharp edge to it. "Hi. Colonel Robert Hogan, US Army Air Forces. Hope you'll enjoy your stay in the Stalag 13 Grand Palace – granted, it's not the Excelsior, but I'll think you'll like it all the same."

Murray and Berkowitz saluted; Murray's eyes were still on the American, unsure what to think.

"Flight Sergeant Jack Murray, Corporal Eugene Berkowitz."

Hogan's grin widened, and he saluted back. "Royal Air Force, eh? Boy, won't Newkirk be happy. He was complaining the other day about Americans prisoners starting to outnumber the British. Or the English, I'm not too sure. Since he always forgets the Australians anyway –"

"_Ho_gan!"

If the situation had not been so serious, Murray would have found the whole scene very entertaining. Klink and Hogan made a perfect contrast, Klink vainly trying to get back in control of the interrogation and Hogan verbally ducking, dodging and manipulating him. In the end, Klink threw in the towel and sent both NCOs to the cooler without further questioning.

Hogan caught up with them as their guard – a skinny private – opened the outer door.

"Colonel Hogan," said the guard uncertainly, "I do not think you should be here."

"Relax, Solf, I'm just wishing the two new prisoners good night. No rule against that, right?"

He walked ahead of them, and Private Solf appeared to follow him rather than lead the two Englishmen. Finally they stopped at the last door on the right, and the private fiddled with his key ring.

Hogan clapped a hand on Murray's arm.

"Sorry about the housing arrangements, Flight Sergeant. At least you won't be disturbed much till tomorrow morning if the rats leave you alone."

Berkowitz stiffened. "Rats, sir?" Hogan gave a non-committal shrug.

"There's always one dumb enough to try and sneak _in_ rather than out. Keep an eye out, that's all I'm saying."

As Private Solf closed and locked the door of their cell, Murray still stared in front of him, thinking hard. There had to have been some kind of message hidden in the American's words.

_Question is, what is it?_

* * *

><p>"Think 'e's coming around."<p>

"Shh, not so loud. Carter? André, can you hear us?"

Andrew Carter was starting to emerge from the queasy, sticky fog that was filling his head with cotton and his ears with lead – or was it the other way around? He knew he had a very good reason to shake off that darn fog and wake up for good, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was. _Five more minutes, Mom_, he heard himself say in his head.

Those voices sounded awfully familiar, though.

"See? Told you nagging in French was useless."

"I'd like to see _you_ speak a foreign language when you're scared half out of your mind. Si je connaissais le con qui a fait sauter le pont …"

"And there he goes again. _What?_"

"The … bridge …"

Finding you can recognise your friends' voices and understand words is a wonderful thing. Finding your brain finally made the connection with your own voice is even better.

"Carter, you're awake!" That was LeBeau, ecstatic.

"Are you all right, mate?" And Newkirk, worried.

It was taking a huge effort and a lot of concentration, but Carter managed to lift a pair of eyelids that seemed to weigh a ton each. They didn't stay up very long. "Who … blew up the … bridge?"

"Maybe someone who really doesn't like Adolf Hitler bridges," came Newkirk's voice, sounding low, rough and all kinds of wrong. Carter worked harder on getting his eyes to stay open and work properly, and this time he succeeded.

There were trees above him with a patch of night sky and a few stars in the middle, and below it were the concerned faces of Newkirk and LeBeau. Both of them looked as though a giant puppy had flung them to the ground, rolled them around for a bit and started to nibble them for fun. Carter couldn't help but wince at the mental image.

They were very pale, too.

"Hey, guys … You look terrible."

LeBeau snorted, and Newkirk shook his head; both were smiling the same wide grin.

"Well, I don't have a mirror on me person, but believe me, you're not exactly looking your very best, either," Newkirk said in a voice that was still low, but thankfully sounded much more normal. "How're you feeling?"

Carter took a moment to ponder the question. His head was still feeling as though a herd of elephants were using it to play bowling, and his whole body was sore – _Boy, _he thought, _isn't _that_ gonna be fun tomorrow morning_ – but at least he hadn't been singed. This realisation came as a relief; he could recall a few less than pleasant experiences when explosives he was working on had gone off a little too quickly and too close.

"Think I'm okay, considering. What the heck happened, though?"

"The bridge blew up," LeBeau deadpanned, gently steadying him when he tried to sit up.

"Yeah, I figured, but who? Why?" The world tilted, then went back to normal, turning his stomach upside down but at least clearing the last of the fog from his vision. He grabbed the first thing he could grasp – which turned out to be his friends' arms – and tried not to be sick. "I mean, the Underground would have warned us if they had something planned for tonight, wouldn't they?"

"Well, they probably wouldn't have told us to go to rendezvous point P–05 to get a bunch of downed flyers if they knew we'd need that bridge," Newkirk pointed out. "Doesn't make much sense."

"If I knew who it was, I'd wring his neck," said LeBeau darkly. "Newkirk, let's see that map again."

The flashlight, while dented, seemed to have miraculously survived the whole ordeal, and Carter pointed it toward Newkirk's map. "Where's the nearest bridge, then?"

"There – the Hammelburg bridge, about two miles east from here. No, wait, hang on – I'd say just over three thousand yards."

"One kilometre and a half, then – three if you count the trip back. Do you feel up to it, André?"

Carter frowned. "Hold on, you're not thinking of leaving me here, are you? 'Cause I can walk, no problem." He stood up best he could to prove his point; his legs were still shaking mightily when he put his full weight on them, but thankfully, they didn't buckle. "See?"

"Relax, Carter," said LeBeau with a small smile, "we were not going to leave you behind."

"Yeah," Newkirk added, taking out his garrison cap from his pocket and smoothing the creases best he could, "maybe take you back to camp or something, but leaving you all alone here? With all the German patrols on the prowl, and exploding bridges, and wolves all over the place? That would just be nasty."

He had had Carter up until the wolves. The little smirk the Englishman couldn't quite hide made him roll his eyes.

"That's not very funny, Newkirk."

"No, mate, I guess it's not." Newkirk put a friendly arm on his shoulder. "But next time we cross a bridge, let's make sure it's bomb-free, shall we?"

Carter nodded, and fell silent as he concentrated on putting one foot after the other. To his relief, it turned out less difficult than he'd thought it would be: the night air was still hot, but the slight breeze was clearing his head and he felt a lot more steady. A glance at his shirt showed him it had suffered from the blast, and his hands were covered in cuts and bruises – his face probably was no different, and he vaguely tried to get his hair back in order.

_Shame, really. I liked that shirt. I know it's just standard uniform, but still …_

Maybe he could ask London for a new shirt next time? Or he could write a letter to his mom for more shirts. After all, he'd only just received the package of warm winter socks she had sent him last autumn, so maybe the post was working better now and he'd have his shirts by Christmas.

Following one train of thought after another was a nice way to pass the time, and since he was saving his breath to walk and any sound louder than a whisper was a bad idea so close to civilisation, it made up for the lack of conversation. They reached the bridge – and the dark outline of the outskirts of Hammelburg right behind it – before it even occurred to him to look at his watch.

The three of them inspected the Hammelburg bridge for four minutes before tiptoeing across as inconspicuously as they could, and veered west to the previously intended track.

It was the first time Carter was glad to see nothing explode.

* * *

><p><span>Translationsnotes:

_Si je connaissais le con qui a fait sauter le pont_: "If I knew the bloody idiot who blew up the bridge." "_Con_" is a ubiquitous insult, which can mean just about anything from somebody who's being mildly stupid at the moment (_Qu'il est con, celui-là!_ – "(What a) bloody fool!") to a really bad insult (_C'est un sale con_ – "He's an arsehole"). The meaning depends a lot on the context and the speaker's tone and body language, but it's a bad word that children are definitely _not_ encouraged to use (and I'm not sure anyone would have got away using it on TV in the 1960s – even American TV ;o). There's a lot (and I mean a _lot!_) of other insults and profanities available in French (and I'm not even talking about regionalisms), ranging from quite mild to downright obscene through entertainingly rude, but this one crops up most often.

'My' version of the geography of Stalag XIII is based on the real Hammelburg in Bavaria, but I'm taking a few liberties with it.

A garrison cap is the same thing as a field service cap (namely, what Newkirk wears on his head); the terms are just respectively the US and UK expressions.

Oh, and if I can spend the rest of my life without having to make sense of miles, yards and kilometres, I'll be very happy. I'm just terrible at maths, so converting even the simplest distance into different systems was the hardest thing to write in this chapter :D

Next chapter next week! Hope you liked :o]


	3. What's New?

**Author's notes**: There are times I wish I owned the whole series in DVD; all the episodes are available on YouTube, but there are no subtitles (which means that every now and then I miss a word or a witty one-liner) and much as I love the original version I also like the idea of going back to the French version if the fancy takes me (to cast a critical eye at the translation, mostly, but also because most of the dub actors' voices are awesome and quite well-chosen and I'm quite fond of them :o). Ah well. Maybe some day …

_What's New?_ is a 1939 song by Johnny Burke and Bob Haggart; Louis Armstrong's version is particularly lovely.

(Thanks to dust on the wind for pointing out that "urban legend" was anachronistic!)

_Disclaimer:I created the characters of Corporal Berkowitz, Sergeant Dickins, Flight Sergeant Murray, Flight Lieutenant McBride and Squadron Leader Bannister, and had quite a lot of fun in the process. Everything else is CBS property until it falls into public domain, which should be around the 2060s if my maths is correct._

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 3: What's New?**_

Flight Lieutenant McBride was standing guard.

'Standing' might not have been the most accurate word to describe him, though. He was crouching near a particularly thick bush a few yards into the tree line, near enough the mouth of the tiny cave Squadron Leader Bannister and Sergeant Dickins were hiding to let them know instantly if something was wrong. For the moment, nothing had moved apart from a lone rabbit that had sauntered up to a spot not three paces away, then fled as it spotted the potential human threat.

Sean McBride had always been very, very good at lying in wait.

Time passed, and still he sat there, eyes and ears wide open in the dark; how much, though, he could only guess. It couldn't be more than an hour since he had been posted there as lookout, to wait for the Underground to pick them up.

Nothing he had heard about this Papa Bear and his operation had been clear and precise. Of course, it was intelligence business, and as such strictly confidential; but while there were a lot of things a quiet, thoughtful man could pick up on, the only conclusion McBride had been able to draw was that they worked in liaison with MI9 and the Underground in Bavaria. The rest was pure hearsay and exaggeration, and McBride never had much patience for speculative nonsense.

Still, he could not help a little curiosity.

A light breeze rustled the nearby tree leaves; silence immediately fell back as it died down. Still McBride waited, and still he did not get bored.

You're not allowed to get bored when you're the squad's eyes and ears. That's when mistakes get made.

If it had been raining, or if the breeze had not stopped when it did, he might not have heard them coming at all. As it was, his sharp ears picked up whispering voices further into the woods.

"… should know better, Louis. This one's such an easy win I'm not sure why you're so keen on trying."

"Because I know you can never resist a bet."

"Touché, mate. Well, I'm proud to declare I don't know the words to any song in French. There. Now, about –"

The voices got clearer as they got closer; the first speaker was undoubtedly British – his accent placed him as an East End Londoner – while the second one was harder to pin down with just a few words. Undoubtedly Continental, possibly French, Belgian or Dutch.

"So you're sure?"

"Absolutely."

McBride squinted in the direction of the voices through the branches of the bush he was hiding in, and finally caught a glimpse of blue, red and the lighter colour of a third man's shirt. The next thing he head was a song, the tune instantly recognisable in spite of the low voice and the foreign words.

_On ira pendre notre ligne sur la Ligne Siegfried  
>Pour laver le linge voici le moment,<br>On ira pendre notre linge sur la Ligne Siegfried …_

"Oh, no, no, no – no bleedin' way. That's an English song."

"Ah, but the words are in French, non?"

"Oi, what sort of logic is that? That's cheating!"

"Ouaip."

_French_, McBride thought_. Definitely French._

"Too bad, I would've liked to have fish and chips," said a third voice – cheerful in a slightly subdued way, with an unmistakeable American accent. "Never heard that song, though. What's it about?"

Neither the Englishman nor the Frenchman answered right away, and in the sudden silence McBride slowly stood up, showing his empty hands.

The men tensed immediately, and two of them whipped out their guns.

The first thing he thought was that they made an odd trio, to say the least; mismatched in everything, from nationality through to rank and build. The lanky brown-haired man and the short dark-eyed and -haired one both appeared to be corporals – respectively RAF and Free French, McBride noted, spotting the probably handmade Cross of Lorraine under the tricolour insignia on the man's shoulder. The third one (a tall, gangly sort of fellow with a pointy nose) could only be the American, but from where he stood it was impossible to tell his rank for sure.

The only thing all three had in common was a dishevelled, shaken up look, as if they had just been knocked over by something huge. The grip on the guns was remarkably steady, though.

"What are you doing wandering the forest in wintertime?" McBride said calmly, waiting for the next part of the recognition code.

The Englishman lowered his gun and said in a low voice, "I am to look for a basket of strawberries, and I am not to go home until I can take them with me. Blimey," he added, shaking his head and putting his gun away, "who comes up with this stuff?"

"Told you," said the American, turning to his comrade with a grin. Up close, he looked as though he had been through the mill, his face and upper body covered in scratches and bruises. Compared to him, the other two barely appeared rumpled.

It suddenly brought the explosion from earlier back to McBride's mind. Maybe those three had something to do with it.

"Flight Lieutenant McBride, RAF," he said, making a mental note to ask them when Squadron Leader Bannister was present.

He got an English, a French, and an American salute in response; they were not exactly textbook-perfect, but he was quite willing to overlook such a detail if these men could indeed help the crew – what remained of it, he reminded himself with a twinge – get back home.

"Technical Sergeant Carter, sir."

"Caporal LeBeau."

"Corporal Newkirk. Are you alone, then, sir? Just that we were told there were three airmen –"

McBride cut him off. "I'm not alone." He walked up to the unassuming little cave to warn Squadron Leader Bannister and Sergeant Dickins, who promptly came out of the bushes.

Introductions were made quickly, and Bannister, Dickins and McBride followed the newcomers into the forest. There was no time to lose.

They walked for a few dozen yards in silence. After exchanging a look with McBride, Bannister asked, frowning, "We heard something earlier, like an explosion. You lads had anything to do with it?"

The three men looked at each other; Sergeant Carter said uncertainly, "Well, the Adolf Hitler bridge blew up, sir. We're not sure what happened," he added, something like indignation in his voice, "but if it _had_ been us we would've done a better job."

"And we wouldn't have been standing so close, too," Corporal LeBeau muttered, stealing a grim sort of glance at his two comrades.

"Does this kind of thing happen often?" asked Dickins, sounding a little nervous. Corporal Newkirk shrugged.

"The Underground usually warns us when they've got something planned, and we always manage to send a word when it's our turn to have our little fun with explosives. Maybe there's been a little … miscommunication somewhere. We'll sort it out with the Guv when we get there – it's going to take longer, though, what with the detour and everything."

"If I may, Corporal," Bannister asked, probably as curious as McBride was but more willing to voice it, "exactly where is 'there'?"

"Also," Dickins chimed in, "how come you're wearing uniforms?"

Carter opened his mouth to answer, but LeBeau gently elbowed him and Newkirk said with a large grin, "All in good time, gents. All in good time."

The man must have been a performer at some point, McBride decided, and part of him probably never quite left the stage. He was enjoying himself a little too visibly.

There _was_ a question the flight lieutenant was curious enough to ask, and if instincts served him well, the Frenchman would be the most likely person to answer it. So he sidled up to the short corporal and asked in a low voice, "I heard you talking earlier. What did he lose?"

LeBeau's face looked blank for a second, then lit up with a cheeky grin that made his dark eyes gleam. "He said he didn't know any song in French, so I bet tomorrow's dinner there had to be at least one. If I lost, he would get his fish and chips." The mere mention of it was enough to make him grimace, but his smirk reappeared as quickly as it had gone. "On the other hand, since I won, I'm making piperade."

McBride had never heard the word before.

"What's that?"

"Red and green peppers, tomatoes, onions, eggs and a bit of ham if I can get it. Of course it won't be quite the same with the powdered eggs, but hey, c'est la guerre."

A fatalistic shrug accompanied the French words, but the twinkle in his eyes didn't so much as dwindle. McBride found himself smiling ever so slightly.

"That doesn't sound too bad. And you say this is because he _lost _the wager?"

LeBeau glanced at Newkirk – who was talking as he walked with Carter and Dickins – with a smile tinged with a sort of exasperated fondness. "The English are a people of culinary barbarians, and he's very, very English. No offence meant, sir," he added quickly.

McBride made an effort to keep his voice even. After all, a Continental was not required to instantly know one British Isle accent from another. As it happened, though, this subject was the one and only thing that could ever get a rise out of him – this, and someone insulting the Raith Rovers.

"Corporal, I am not, and have never been English."

LeBeau blinked, puzzled.

"I happen to be Scottish. From Kirkcaldy, to be exact."

The grin came back full force, all traces of mockery gone.

"Glad to meet you, sir."

"Likewise, Corporal."

He fell silent for a few seconds as he tried to walk as soundlessly as possible, nonetheless rustling the leaves and hearing twigs crack under his feet; then, as an idea shaped up in his mind and became persistent, he turned back to LeBeau, and asked with a small smile, "Have you ever heard of cockaleekie?"

* * *

><p>As quiet as it ever got in the barracks – and right now was pretty darn quiet, with three men missing and about ten others trying to sleep and probably failing – it never came close to the absolute stillness that filled the tunnel when Kinchloe manned the radio in the small hours of the night. Things could get a little spooky down there with only him and the often silent radio, and had he been a superstitious man, he would have found it difficult to do his job properly. Since he was not, however, the only things he had to fight off was boredom, cold (the tunnels got freezing drafts during winter) and the ever-present nagging worry that never failed to gnaw at his insides when one or more of his friends was out there risking his neck.<p>

Baker would often keep him company then, asking smart, relevant questions, talking, but mostly just listening. The kid was a good listener. He also had the makings of an excellent radio operator, and he was the only one with whom Kinch felt free to use any technical jargon he wanted – he was sure that Baker understood what he meant.

Right now, though, Sergeant Baker was asleep in his bunk – Kinch had checked up on the boys before he got down to the tunnel – and he was alone at the silent radio.

_Not for long, though_, he thought as he heard somebody open the bunk entrance and climb down the ladder into the tunnel. A second later, Colonel Hogan was putting down a steaming mug of coffee in front of him and leaned on the side of the table, another cup in his hands.

As usual when the game was on, he cut right to the chase.

"Well, our two airmen are comfy in the cooler, I'll go talk to them soon as we got a plan to get them out of here before tomorrow morning. Still no news?"

Kinch thanked Hogan with a nod and took a sip out of his mug. The coffee was indeed as hot as it looked.

"No, Colonel. Guess they still don't know who bombed that bridge. None of our Underground contacts gave the order; from what I understand, they were thinking _we_ had."

"And the boys?"

"Nobody's seen them."

"They must have taken an alternate route. The Hammelburg bridge would be the most logical …"

Kinch said nothing. He was weighing three possible scenarios. One, the men were nowhere near that bridge when it exploded, and they had made contact with the flyers and were taking the long way to bring them back. Two, they _had _been near the bridge, and they had been hurt and thus would take an even longer time to get there and back. Three … Three was both possible _and_ plausible, but Kinch flat-out refused to give it any thought before he had solid proof.

_Proof, as in, something to bury_, whispered the cold little voice of worry at the back of his head that never failed to make him shiver, even on hot August nights.

Hogan looked down at him, and he put a hand on Kinch's shoulder; silent understanding passed between them. The cold little voice backed into a corner, but the worry still remained.

"They'll make it," he said in a low voice. "And if they don't, well, we'll do what we always do."

"Fly by the seat of our pants?" Kinch asked wryly. A hint of a smile resurfaced in Hogan's eyes.

"I was gonna say 'We'll think of something', but this fits just as well." He drank a bit of coffee, and made a face. "Damn, it's still hot."

"Hardly surprising, with this heat. It's still a bit cooler down here, though."

"I'll say. These days I'm always wondering when the corned beef tin cans will explode –"

Hogan trailed off, and a small smile began to stretch his lips, turning into a fully-fledged grin when the idea started to take shape in his mind.

Kinch had seen this grin countless times, and some of the worry faded from his guts. It meant that Colonel Hogan had a crazy idea – the kind that might just be crazy enough to work. Generally speaking, the bigger his smile got, the more dangerous the idea was, and something told him he was not going to be disappointed.

"Tell me, Kinch," he began in a thoughtful tone, "that kid who's been following Carter around lately talking his ear off about explosives and stuff – he's in Barracks 8, isn't he?"

"Gordon? Yeah, he is. Why?"

"Because, my friend," Hogan said, his dark eyes glittering, "since our resident expert is currently out of town, we're going to see if he can put his money where his mouth is."

Kinch would almost have been afraid to ask if a small, familiar tingle in the tips of his fingers wasn't already reminding him that he was being drawn into the colonel's game and loving every minute of it. For a man who prided himself on his ability to keep a level head and both feet on the ground no matter how insane things got, this last part was probably more worrying than anything.

"What's your plan, Colonel?"

* * *

><p>"Sarge? I mean, Flight Sergeant?"<p>

Flight Sergeant Jack Murray had the uncanny but quite handy ability to fall asleep no matter the circumstances if he allowed himself to. It had been hard-won, but he had perfected the technique over the years and being able to catch forty winks had served him well in the past.

Waking up was always a little harder, though.

"What's the matter, lad?" he grumbled, rubbing his face energetically to get rid of the sleepy numbness. Corporal Berkowitz's voice was as low as ever, but it was tinged with a little surprise and curiosity.

"Um, think we've got visitors, Flight Sergeant."

"What the –" Visitors? He hadn't even heard footsteps in the corridor.

Then a trapdoor opened near his feet, and Colonel Hogan grinned up at him.

"Darn – knew I should've made that turn at Albuquerque."

Berkowitz's mouth slackened, and Murray's eyes went round.

"Sir, does that tunnel –"

"– Lead outside? In a way. But you're not using it right now. I'm just bringing you some bad news: you won't be able to keep that appointment tomorrow morning with the Gestapo."

Murray frowned. What was the man playing at? "Why's that, Colonel?"

Hogan's grin was sending a shiver down Murray's spine, and judging by the look on Berkowitz' face he was having serious misgivings as well. O_fficers are _not_ supposed to have that much fun at the junior NCOs' expense, dammit. That's _our_ job._

"Because we're gonna blow you sky-high."

* * *

><p>Can you picture Hogan as Bugs Bunny and Hochstetter as Elmer Fudd? "<em>What is this wabbit doing here?<em>"

Translations/Notes:

_We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line_ is a 1939 British song (the Siegfried Line being a series of defensive fortifications along the German border from the North Sea to the Swiss border), written at the time Britain and France thought the Nazis were going to be a pushover and they would be home by Christmas (because that kind of thinking went _so_ well against the Germans in 1914…); its French translation had its own little success. Needless to say, it wasn't so relevant nor popular a few months later. By the time Carter was drafted (after Pearl Harbor), nobody in England would have played that song.

_Ouaip_: equivalent to "Yep/Yup". French not being as flexible a (written) language as English, it's often spoken but rarely written; the exception is the _Lucky Luke_ comics, where it's practically a catchphrase of the main character's.

"_They asked, 'What dost thou here in the forest in the winter time, in thy thin dress?' 'Ah,' she answered, 'I am to look for a basketful of strawberries, and I am not to go home until I can take them with me'.__"_ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, _The Three Little Men in the Woods_. Yes, really.

The Cross of Lorraine (la croix de Lorraine) is the two-barred cross (one vertical bar crossed by two horizontal bars, the upper bar the shortest) that Général De Gaulle and the Résistance adopted as an emblem for the Free French Forces. You can see it on LeBeau's jacket's shoulder beneath the tricolour and the two corporal's chevrons. This means he was probably captured after July 3rd 1940 (the surrender of France was on June 22nd); I read that some French units were still fighting as late as July 10th, by which time the Germans pressured the Vichy "government" into making all of them stand down or they would take retaliatory measures on civilians. If LeBeau had been captured as a Free French, he would probably had worn a RAF or RCAF uniform (the irony :D) and carried Canadian papers, because otherwise he would have been identified as an irregular or a partisan and shot.

_C'est la guerre_: literally, "It's/That's war". Roughly equivalent to "There's a war on, you know".

The Raith Rovers Football Club is a Kirkcaldy-based football team. They set quite a few records in goal-scoring in the 1930s.

The Scottish and the French have fought the English for a long, _long_ time, and the "Auld Alliance" is said to be one of the oldest alliances in the world. Also, _never_ mistake a Scot for an Englishman. It's the kind of mistake that can shorten a lifespan dramatically :D

Cockaleekie is a Scottish soup made from leeks and chicken stock (or broth). Perfect winter dish :o)

Hope you liked!


	4. Stiff Upper Lip

**Author's note:** There seems to be a glitch with the FFnet email alerts (Story, Forum Thread, Review…); I'm actually looking forward to my inbox being flooded with answers to forum threads :o)

So, two of our groups have linked up; now it's going to be a picnic (albeit slightly delayed by the blowing up of the Adolf Hitler bridge) back to camp, right?

…Well, no. You didn't think it was going to be that easy, now, did you?

_Stiff Upper Lip_, besides being a great song by AC/DC, is a 1937 song written by Ira Gershwin and composed by George Gershwin; for some reason there's something about the lyrics that reminds me of Colonel Crittendon. In a good way, though; funnily enough, after a few episodes I've grown rather fond of the old chap :o)

_Disclaimer: I own any character mentioned here that you don't recognise; the rest don't belong to me and I promise I'll put them back when I'm done. Promise._

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 4: Stiff Upper Lip**_

Sergeant Dickins was a nice fellow, Carter mused as the two of them walked ahead of the others to the Hammelburg bridge. It was a shame he couldn't just tell him where they were headed just yet – this was standard precaution, just in case the flyers turned out to be German plants – but Carter made up for this no-go subject by telling Dickins about life in Muncie, Indiana, and asking him about life in Liverpool.

As it turned out, Ron Dickins had been a bartender before the war, and as such was full of colourful stories, to say the least.

"… And then – I swear it's true! – the poor bloke stands up, downs his beer in one gulp, and his trousers go down like _that_," he finished, snapping his fingers for effect and laughing. Carter followed suit.

"Boy, that must've been embarrassing."

"Not really. _He_ went down next. Practically crashed a table when he did, too." Dickins shook his head with a grin. "Next day he came back and asked around how he got that big old bruise on the back of his head. Never found out he'd lost his trousers in the meantime."

"Nobody told him?"

"Nah, his mates weren't that cruel." He shot a sideways glance at Carter. "You never got smashed at the pub with your mates?"

Carter searched his memory, but came up short.

"Well … no." He paused, then went on uncertainly, "I didn't have that many good friends back home, actually. Lots of family, and a few buddies, but …" His voice trailed off. This particular batch of memories wasn't bad, as such, but there were one or two he could have done without. He shrugged. "Guess they thought I was weird. Told me so, a couple of times."

Judging by the sudden silence and the odd look Dickins was giving him (a mixture of curiosity and pity) he had done it again – blurted out something he probably shouldn't have.

_Ah well. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last either._

"So … You're telling me you had no real friends back home?"

"I dunno. I never got smashed at the pub with my mates, anyway. Is that a bad thing?"

Dickins seemed to ponder the question for a bit.

"Not really, no. But it's a bit sad, I reckon. Every man's entitled to at least one or two loyal mates."

Carter brightened instantly, feeling much more cheerful. "Oh, but I've got Newkirk and LeBeau, and Kinch, and I guess the Colonel does count even though he's an officer and everything, and Olsen, and Baker –"

Dickins cut him off, grinning.

"You're best friends with all of them?"

"Perhaps not really _all_ of them, but yeah, they're pals. You know, the kind you can count on. I mean, there was that time I really thought my goose was cooked, but then –"

He was getting carried away again, and probably would have ended up spilling a secret mission or two, but Newkirk crept up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, "Hold that thought, Andrew. We're not out of the woods yet."

"Are you sure this bridge is safe?" Dickins whispered back urgently. Newkirk gave a non-committal shrug.

"We checked it out for any shifty business last time we crossed it," he replied dryly, still in a low voice. "Since that was about an hour ago, I think we should be safe. Come on, off you go. Quickly, mind."

Perhaps some of it was sarcasm, but as usual Carter chose not to pay attention. He crossed the bridge as inconspicuously as he could, Dickins right behind him, silently thanking whoever had given orders to have a nightly black-out in Hammelburg. It made sneaking around that much easier.

Bannister and McBride were next, followed by Newkirk and LeBeau. In the half-dark, Carter saw the Frenchman shake his head.

"At this rate we won't get there before five," he heard him mutter. "Si je connaissais le _con_ qui a fait sauter le pont …"

"Oi, you're not still going on about that, are you?" whispered Newkirk. "Forget the bloody bridge and let's get a move on. We're close enough to Hammelburg as it is."

"He's right," Bannister said curtly. "No need to broadcast our presence to the Jerries. They must already be patrolling the woods since the bridge blew up."

Just one second after he closed his mouth, something nearby went _click_. It wasn't a loud click, but it was enough to make Carter's brain switch to autopilot; he threw himself at Dickins and yelled "_Get down!_"

The explosion drowned out his voice. He didn't hear his own words even as they left his mouth.

He flattened himself half on the ground, half on the British sergeant, one arm keeping him down and the other covering his own head while the world shook and the bright, yellowish-orange glare burned through his eyelids even as he screwed them shut. Somehow he resisted the temptation to open his eyes and admire the pretty colours. They were a little too close to be able to truly enjoy the show.

It seemed to last forever, and his ears kept on ringing for several minutes after the noise died down.

When he dared to raise his head from the moss, he realised he was covered in earth and pieces of shredded leaves and twigs. Rubbing the spots out of his eyes, he caught a glimpse of Dickins beside him, short brown curls a complete mess and blue eyes wide open in shock in the middle of a white, dirt-smudged face.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered hoarsely, "what 'appened?"

Carter didn't answer right away; he sat up and looked back first. Sure enough, there was a huge hole in the bridge. It seemed to have fared a little better than the last, though: most of the supports were still standing, and the amount of pieces of timber and rubble stone strewn about the banks was smaller.

"Looks like the bridge blew up," he said shakily, struggling to his feet and leaning against a tree for support. Thankfully, he hadn't been standing so close this time and luckily had been quicker to react – while he was still dizzy, he was recovering a little faster. "Again."

Where were the others? All he could see by moonlight was the remains of the bridge; the grassy banks and the woods were still too dark for his eyes to focus properly.

"Everybody okay?" he asked, still not daring to trust his wobbly legs and let go of the tree. He heard a groan somewhere to his left and squinted in that direction, still only discerning a bunch of trees and shadows.

One of the shadows turned out to be Squadron Leader Bannister, who shook his head gingerly and muttered, "In a manner of speaking. McBride? Dickins? You all right?"

"Right as rain, sir," came Dickins' still croaky voice behind the American. "Thanks, Carter," he added in a grateful undertone.

"I'll be fine, sir," said McBride, and Carter finally spotted him about three yards from the edge of the water, hunched over something and cradling his left arm. "But you'd better come and take a look."

Bannister got up somehow – he seemed a lot steadier than Carter felt, but he still needed to pause and close his eyes for a second after he got to his feet – and slowly walked up to McBride, limping a little.

The last spots finally cleared from Carter's vision, and he could make out the two dark shapes McBride was kneeling next to in the grass. Even from where he stood, Newkirk and LeBeau both looked pale as a sheet, and frighteningly still.

Carter's breath caught in his throat, and he staggered toward his friends, the same two words going over and over in his head like a scratched record.

_Oh no._

* * *

><p>Sergeant Murray stared at Hogan, dark eyes bulging. "You're going to do <em>what<em>!?"

Robert Hogan would be the first – scratch that, maybe the third or fourth – to admit that he enjoyed a good dramatic one-liner from time to time, especially when he was the one who delivered it. But there was a time and place for everything, and right now the two prisoners deserved some explanation.

"Relax, we're not going to kill you for real. We'll just make it look like the ammunition stored here went off because of the heat. These things will happen."

Murray's shoulders drooped, and the young corporal – Berkowitz – gave a small smile.

"Do you do this kind of thing often?" he asked, a touch of hope in his tone.

"Well, you know, it's a hobby. Keeps us out of trouble." The quip had the desired effect; both flyers looked more relaxed, but their eyes told Hogan they were listening raptly. "The only thing you have to do is go down that tunnel when – and only when – one of my men comes up to get you. You'll have to leave your jackets and hats behind, but don't worry, I'm sure they got a stock of them where you're going."

"Which is?" Murray asked, his eyes narrowed. Hogan stared right back.

"Why, Merry Old England, of course."

Murray and Berkowitz looked at each other with mirroring expressions of mixed enthusiasm and scepticism.

"What about Squadron Leader Bannister, Flight Lieutenant McBride and Sergeant Dickins, Colonel?" asked Berkowitz tentatively. "We can't leave without them."

The voice was uncertain, but the brown eyes showed genuine determination not to leave his fellow crewmen – friends, maybe – behind. _Kid's got grit somewhere_, Hogan thought, studying him carefully. _Wonder if he knows it_.

He took a second to mull over both the question and the involuntary reminder that the three British flyers were not the only ones whose whereabouts were currently unknown.

_They _will_ make it_, he told himself again, shoving the cold uncertainty in a dark corner of his mind. _They got themselves out of worse situations before. Just trust them and focus on the job at hand_.

"We're working on that," he finally replied, making sure his voice sounded as confident and convincing as he wanted to appear. "I got my men on the case, they should be back with your colleagues soon enough. In the meantime, sit tight, and wait for one of us to give you the signal to go. It's very important that the guard sees you here right before the cooler goes boom."

"Right, sir," said Murray calmly – but it was obviously a faked calm, a façade behind which he was seething with impatience. "So what happens _after_ the cooler, er, 'goes boom'?"

"That, Flight Sergeant, is another story for another time." Hogan knocked a short code on the trapdoor, and it opened. "Let's just get the two of you out of Klink's – and the Gestapo's – radar. The rest will be as easy as falling off a log."

_Making sure nobody gets hurt falling off that log, that's the hard part_, he thought as he climbed down the tunnel, closing the trapdoor behind him.

* * *

><p>Fire and ice burned in turns in McBride's arm, making his head – and stomach – swim slightly. His entire body felt numb in comparison. He grit his teeth against the pain as discreetly as he could and reached out to put two fingers of his good hand against Newkirk's neck. It was with a certain amount of relief that he discovered the man was indeed alive – still unconscious, and curled up on himself in a manner that made it clear something was wrong with him, but alive.<p>

McBride shot an inquisitive glance at his squadron leader, who had turned LeBeau's body over and was checking him for signs of life as well. Bannister gave a short nod, and despite the white-hot pain in his arm McBride breathed a little more freely. At least no one was dead.

He heard a groan from Newkirk, followed by a pained gasp and a breathless "Wha' …? Ow, bloody 'ell …" as he tried to move. Carter immediately dropped down beside his friend, almost as pale as he was.

"Hey, take it easy," he said shakily. "You're not looking good at all, you know."

Newkirk's wince turned into a smirk for a second.

"Three words, mate. Pot. Kettle. Black. Ow …" The smirk was gone as another imprudent movement left him gasping for breath again; somehow, he still managed to let loose a string of very imaginative curses McBride stoically chose to ignore, ending on a comparatively mild, "What the bloody hell happened, Andrew?"

Carter gave a nervous chuckle. "Well, would ya believe someone blew up the bridge? I mean, this one, too?"

Newkirk blinked.

"You're joking," he said flatly.

The American met his deadpan stare with a sheepish look. "Wish I was. Looks like somebody really has it in for us, huh?"

"Or it could just be a series of coincidences, and you're not the target at all," McBride pointed out. "Accidents do happen."

Newkirk shot him a withering look, bordering on sheer insubordination. He had never seen a corporal look at him like that; it almost made him glad Bannister had gone to check up on Dickins and couldn't have seen that look. McBride could let it slide on account of what had just happened, but Bannister certainly wouldn't.

"With all due respect, sir," Newkirk said, undisguised sarcasm in his voice, pulling himself up to a sitting position, "you'd have to be monumentally stupid to pull off an 'accident' like that. That, or a ruddy genius –"

His gaze unfocused slightly and veered to the left, and he trailed off mid-sentence; McBride frowned, and was about to check him for head wounds, when he noticed the growing panic in his eyes.

"Louis … He – he was right behind me when –"

"I'm still behind you," said a very quiet voice behind McBride. When he turned around to look, he saw the Frenchman sitting up on his elbows, a look of dazed confusion on his face. It probably had something to do with the fact that blood was running down one side of his face from a nasty-looking wound slightly above his hairline. He frowned, and added in the same slow, faraway tone, "Don't tell me the bridge blew up."

"The bridge blew up," Newkirk immediately deadpanned with a smirk in his voice that didn't mask the relief in his eyes. "And if I ever catch the silly bastard who tried to do us in _twice_, I'm throttling him."

"Get in line," muttered LeBeau. "I said that first."

"We'll take it in turns, then. Okay, Carter, help me up. Mind the ribs, though, they're being a bugger at the moment."

This seemed to get LeBeau's full attention. "You're hurt?" he asked more sharply, worry flashing in his eyes. Newkirk made a dismissing gesture with the hand that was not gripping Carter's arm.

"Nothing a cup of tea and a few days' rest won't fix. Hey, you never know, maybe this time the Guv will agree to get a nurse 'round the old place. Part-time, of course." He winked, and walked over to where LeBeau was sitting with an almost completely steady step. "She'd have to be a good-looking bird, too. Wilson would appreciate the help, and we'd all appreciate the view."

"Let's not get our hopes up," mumbled the Frenchman with a small smile. McBride staggered up as he could using only his right hand, and crouched in front of him, fishing his torch out of his pocket.

"How're you feeling?" he asked, flashing the light into the dark eyes. LeBeau blinked, then shrugged.

"Er … A bit woozy. Is that the right word?"

Both eyes seemed all right. That was a good sign. "You're dizzy, disoriented, and a little bit sick to the stomach?"

"Un peu, oui."

"Then it's the right word." McBride put the torch away and stood up again. "Can you get up?"

With a bit of help from Carter – the only one of them who was completely steady on his feet – it turned out he could, and the four of them joined Bannister and Dickins under the cover of trees. Bannister helped McBride fashion a makeshift sling out of his jacket and walked off for a bit of reconnoitring; meanwhile, Dickins stared wide-eyed at the little Frenchman, who finally caught on and said, "What?", sounding mildly annoyed.

"Well …" Dickins made a face, and pointed to his head. "That's a lot of blood there. Are you okay?"

LeBeau's face went blank, and he slowly raised a hand to touch the side of his face; Newkirk and Carter, who had turned round at the word 'blood', both shouted "No, don't!" in perfect unison. Too late, though: LeBeau took one look at the red on his fingers, his eyes rolled in his head and he would have fallen face first if McBride's reflexes had been any slower. If the flight lieutenant had had full use of both his arms, he probably would have been able to catch him; since he only had one in working order, LeBeau still ended up hitting the ground, but from a lesser distance.

McBride straightened up and leaned against a nearby tree, breathing heavily and seeing spots from the pain in his arm. The little Frenchman was heavier than he looked.

"Now you've done it!" Newkirk snapped at Dickins, who looked on in confused surprise. "What'd you have to go and tell him that for? He was doing fine so far!"

"Fine?" Dickins countered when he finally found his voice, still sounding taken aback. "What d'you mean, 'fine'? He has a bloomin' great hole in his head!"

"Yeah, but he didn't need to _know_ it!" Newkirk retorted, making perfect illogical sense. He leaned against a tree to stoop and tap a paper-white cheek. "Come on, Louis, wake up, will you? Blimey, you chose one hell of a moment to pass out on us …"

"You don't think something's really wrong with him, do you?" asked Carter, hovering near the two and looking as though he wasn't sure he ought to worry or not. Newkirk shook his head.

"Nah, I don't think so. We'll still getting Wilson to take a look at him first thing when we get there, though."

McBride opened his mouth to point out that Wilson – whom he assumed was a doctor or a medic – would certainly want to take a look at his ribs, too, but he closed it after he saw Carter shoot an unusually sharp glance at Newkirk. For all that the American appeared genial and accommodating, McBride had a funny feeling that he wouldn't let his friend go until he had dragged him in front of a doctor.

Bannister had been scouting ahead for German patrols; he retraced his steps, keeping rustling sounds to a minimum, and caught sight of Newkirk on the ground, still trying to revive LeBeau.

"What happened?"

"_He_ happened," Newkirk muttered, jerking a thumb towards Dickins, who raised his hands defensively.

"He was covered in blood, so I asked him if he really was okay, that's all! Honestly, it's not like I bashed 'im on the head meself!"

"Come on, Newkirk, he's kinda right," said Carter reasonably, "it's not really his fault. LeBeau would have noticed eventually."

Everybody looked at him.

"Noticed what?" Bannister asked, curious.

"Well, the … blood." Carter faltered, only noticing now that Newkirk's glare had shifted from Dickins to him. "What?"

"You mean," said Bannister slowly, "he fainted just because he saw the blood?"

"Well, yeah."

Bannister's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline, and Dickins let out a small incredulous chuckle, probably more out of nervousness than from genuine mockery. McBride remained silent. He watched Carter shuffle uncomfortably, while Newkirk glared fiercely at Bannister and Dickins, as though daring them to find anything funny.

Then – to McBride's surprise – Newkirk turned back to LeBeau and said, "Come on, mate, just because everybody and their mums say the Frogs are a bunch of quitters who surrender at the first sign of trouble doesn't mean you have to prove them right, eh? Snap out of it, LeBeau, or I'll make a list of every single French defeat from the Hundred Years' War on, and it ain't gonna be pretty!"

"I think the French won that one," McBride pointed out quietly. Newkirk shot him a deadpan, You're-not-really-helping kind of look, then glanced down. LeBeau was still unconscious.

Newkirk swore under his breath and muttered, "Well. Now we know he's well out of it this time."

From the corner of his eye, McBride saw Dickins shake his head with a slight smile. "A soldier who can't stand the sight of blood. Makes you wonder if they have airmen who are afraid of flying, too."

It was at best not a very funny joke, and at worst rather poor taste, and it didn't deserve the reaction it got from Newkirk. The corporal was on his feet quicker than he should have been with a couple (or more) ribs in poor shape, and his glare made Dickins take an involuntary step back.

"If you want to insult a bloke," he hissed, practically nose-to-nose with the Liverpudlian, "you do it when he's awake so he can answer."

Dickins leaned back, wide-eyed. "But," he stammered, "you've just said a lot worse!"

Newkirk shrugged. It was a particularly expressive shrug, and McBride didn't blame Dickins for flinching slightly.

"It's not the same. He knows I don't mean a word of it, for starters."

"If you're quite finished harassing my sergeant, Corporal," came Bannister's wry voice, "maybe we can get a move on. We've been lucky so far, but soon these woods are going to be full of angry Germans who don't like what's been done to their bridges."

"It's getting kinda late, too – the others will get worried," Carter said earnestly; one look at him confirmed that he was not, in fact, being sarcastic. "I'll carry LeBeau. He'll probably wake up soon, anyway."

Dickins had been staring at Newkirk with a mixture of wariness and total incomprehension, but at Carter's words he blinked and stepped forward.

"No, I'll do it," he said, his voice gone down to a more normal pitch. "So far I'm the only one who hasn't been knocked off my feet by a bridge tonight."

To McBride's surprise, Newkirk made no biting comment. If his curt nod was anything to judge by, he even agreed with him.

Unlike Bannister (who was shorter, but built like a stevedore) and McBride (all lean muscles on thick bones), Dickins was round-faced and slightly on the chubby side; nevertheless, he picked up the Frenchman and heaved him on his shoulders in a fireman's carry rather easily. Carter fell into step with him, and they walked off, picking up an unfinished conversation in hushed whispers; Bannister fell back a few yards behind the group, as rear-guard.

McBride turned to Newkirk and offered him his good arm to help him up; the corporal gratefully grabbed it, wincing openly but silently as his ribs protested the sudden movement. He was looking a lot more drawn than he had only a minute ago, his face now ashen and wan, and McBride wondered how much of the jokes and the anger had been for Carter's benefit.

He carefully avoided asking, although he did steal a glance at Newkirk a few yards later and asked quietly, "Does it really work?"

Newkirk blinked tiredly, and frowned at him, puzzled. "Wha'?"

"Insulting your friend awake."

"Oh, that." He gave a smirk that unveiled his eye-teeth. "Would you believe it did the trick, once or twice. Well, more once than twice, actually, but yeah, I have to say it worked."

McBride looked at him sideways, sensing there was a bit more to the story. "What happened, then?"

"He socked me in the eye before he was even conscious. Didn't hear or remember a thing I said, or so he claims." He shrugged. "Anyway, like I said, he knows I don't mean that rubbish. I've seen the French fight, at Dunkirk. The commanders were ruddy idiots, but that's fairly usual for officers – saving your presence, sir," he added as an afterthought; McBride waved off the comment with a roll of his eyes "– but the soldiers, now, they fought like devils during the evacuation."

"I know."

McBride could have said that he had been there, too, during that nightmare of a summer, desperately racing for the beach with his crew after his Fairey Battle was shot down, amidst the gunfire, blood, sand, tears, sweat and grime. He could have recalled the terrible waiting on the dunes, the wild terror every time they heard the shrill whine of a nose-diving Stuka about to rain death on them from above, the guilt eating at his insides as fellow soldiers around him jerked and fell under German bullets but _he_ didn't …

But Sean McBride had never been one to use too many words where two sufficed.

Besides, from the sharp look Newkirk shot at him, two words were more than enough.

"How did you get out of there?" he asked quietly.

McBride breathed deeply through his nose, as inconspicuously as possible. "Sheer luck and a trawler that fished me out of the drink with thirty other lads. How did you?"

"I didn't." The corporal smiled, a half-hearted, slightly twisted smile. "Long story. And the ending's probably classified anyway. Sort of."

_Ah, yes. The famous 'Papa Bear' secrecy._

"I _have_ heard a little about your organisation, you know. You're a rumour already – a few more months and you'll be shrouded in myth."

This got a sideways glance that was halfway between wry humour and textbook deadpan. "I'd prefer not to be shrouded in anything, if that's all the same to you, sir."

It was the tone that did it. Despite the pain, despite the grim situation, and despite the fact that it was not _that_ funny, McBride couldn't help it. He grinned.

* * *

><p><span>Translationsnotes:

_un peu, oui_: "a bit, yes/yeah."

The Fairey Battle was a British light bomber.

_Stuka_ (_**Stu**__rz__**ka**__mpfflugzeug__)_ means dive bomber; the Junkers Ju 87 became so famous during the Blitzkrieg and the Battles of France and Britain that the name 'Stuka' is now specifically associated with this particular plane. A Stuka was a ground-attack aircraft, meaning that its main role was precision attacks on ground forces (and the Dutch, Belgian and French civilians fleeing from the Blitzkrieg in summer 1940); when you heard its shrill, wailing siren, it usually meant it was too late to hide. Have you ever heard Stukas in a WW2 documentary? It's a nightmarish sound.

Next chapter next week!


	5. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

**Author's note**: Plot bunnies are a tricky species to rear – you feed them and water them and you hope that they'll grow up into fully-fledged stories. I'm currently nurturing a couple; hopefully I'll be able to make something of them. In the meantime, since it's Tuesday, here's a chapter of _Into the Woods_ :o)

_Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea_ is a favourite song of mine since I first heard George Harrison's posthumous _Brainwashed_ album; there's just something about this song on a ukulele that warms my heart right up. Besides, it describes our Heroes' current situation quite accurately.

_Disclaimer: Besides the five British flyers, I own Charlie Gordon-Lyons, whom I'm rather fond of; CBS and Bing Crosby (mayherestinpeace) own everything/one else._

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 5: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea**_

It was an hour or so till dawn, and although this meant that temperatures in Barracks 8 had reached their lowest until the next night, it was still very hot. Everything was quiet and still apart from snores coming from a few of the bunks, and the only thing that moved were the men's chests rising and falling in peaceful rhythm, and the dust particles only visible when the searchlight from the watchtower fell in through the cracks in the shutters.

Silent as a cat, Kinch crept out of the tunnel by the stove and walked to the bunk near the window. Gordon was sound asleep, like the other guys, and from the look on his face he was having a really good dream. It was almost a shame to wake him up.

But orders were orders. Kinch put one hand on his mouth, another hand on his shoulder, and shook him awake.

Private (trained) Charles Gordon-Lyons let out a muffled yell as his eyes popped open, searching wildly for whatever had disrupted his sleep. Kinch brought a finger to his lips, and the kid's confusion seemed to fade, only to be replaced with a puzzled, inquisitive look that promised a lot of questions very quickly.

Sure enough, when Kinch removed his hand from his mouth, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth to ask the first.

"Later," Kinch whispered, and Gordon drooped a little, deflated.

Gordon – everybody who didn't call him 'Charlie' called him that – was a scrawny airman from Nova Scotia, a kid of twenty-two with unruly mousy hair and striking green eyes, who had the particularity of being the shortest guy in camp – LeBeau had an inch or two on him. That, plus a skinny, underfed overall look, made him appear younger than he was, which meant that he didn't get much heavy lifting duty but also not much respect from some of the guys – at least those who had little time to waste on a wet-behind-the-ears kid who already had an oddball sort of look about him.

He had been in camp for about six months, but since he wasn't part of the Barracks 2 core group Kinch didn't know him that well; he only knew that Gordon had what he described as an amateur's interest in explosive materials.

_Let's hope he was being modest_, Kinch thought as he lead the way down the tunnel.

Colonel Hogan was waiting for them in the radio room, staring at the wall in front of him but not, Kinch suspected, seeing it at all. He got up when he heard them coming.

"At ease, Private, no need to stand on ceremony," he said as Gordon stiffened and saluted. He snapped back a salute and squinted at the kid, leaning back with his arms crossed. Kinch knew that squint. He had met it the first time Hogan had laid eyes on him. It was a squint that told you you were being weighed, measured and subjected to all kinds of evaluations specific to Hogan's mind. As introspection-inducing squints went, this one was much, much more effective than the 'Uncle Sam Wants You' posters.

Gordon shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

"Okay," said Hogan finally, and the kid relaxed ever so slightly, "I need to ask you something, Gordon. Now, before you answer, think hard. It's really important, and kinda dangerous, but nobody's gonna hold anything against you if you say no."

Kinch fought a smile as he saw the sharp cheekbones gradually lose colour. Whatever the reason the colonel wanted to scare the kid – and he had a theory about that – it was working.

"Do you think," Hogan finally asked in a slow, deliberate tone, "you'd be able to blow up a cooler cell from the inside and make it look like it exploded from the corridor?"

It was slow, and gradual, but the corners of Gordon's mouth started to crook up as though of their own accord, his face relaxed, his eyes lit up, and soon he was grinning a fully-fledged, genuine Cheshire Cat grin. It was a little spooky, actually.

"Hell yeah, Colonel."

"Wait, there's a catch. You only got –" Hogan looked at his watch "– two hours and a half to do it."

The huge grin slipped down a notch.

"That's a pretty tall order, sir."

"I know, but it has to be done, and rumour has it you're the man for the job."

Gordon's brow furrowed. "What about Sergeant Carter, sir? Isn't he usually the man for the job?"

Hogan shared a glance with Kinch, and replied in a neutral tone, "Sergeant Carter is currently unavailable. Think you can do it?"

Gordon bit his lip. "I'd have to have access to his equipment."

"No problem. Anything else?"

"I might need help to meet the deadline. For mixing and measuring and stuff."

"I'll send someone down to give you a hand. Is that all?"

Charlie Gordon-Lyons drew himself up to his full height – all one hundred fifty-five centimetres of him – and jutted out his chin proudly.

"I can do it, sir."

"Good. The lab is in the second tunnel on the left, there should be everything you need. And remember, we're on a tight schedule here."

Gordon barely remembered to stammer "Yes, sir" and salute before he ran off, looking as though Christmas had come early. Kinch stole a glance toward his commanding officer, who was gazing at where the private had been standing with the ghost of a satisfied grin on his face.

"You know what, Colonel?" he said dryly. "If Carter doesn't kill you for letting the kid play with his favourite toys, you could get yourself a future as a talent scout when the war is over."

"Somehow," Hogan replied in the same tone, laughter dancing in his eyes, "I doubt the demand for mad bombers and arsonists will be as high then as it is now."

Kinch chuckled.

The radio crackled into life, and he rushed to his post to pick up the headphones. As the Morse message went on, the all-too-familiar icy dead weight he associated with bad news dropped into the bottom of his stomach, and stayed there.

His face must have lost a significant amount of colour, because Hogan slowly stepped closer to the table, frowning.

"What's up?" he asked quietly when Kinch finished tapping the standard 'Message received, stand by' response.

Kinch leaned back in his chair, the headphones still on, suddenly weary. The last cup of coffee seemed but a distant memory now.

"Someone blew up the Hammelburg bridge," he answered, his voice no louder than Hogan's had been. "Puss in Boots wants to know if we had directive to do it, or if we know who did."

Colonel Robert E. Hogan rendered speechless was a rare phenomenon, and somewhere within Kinch's mind a little voice whispered that, like Halley's Comet, it might not occur again for a lifetime.

It didn't last long. Hogan gave Kinch a look where incredulity vied with shock and the beginning of anger for first place. Anger won, of course.

"What the hell is going on?" he finally said loudly, obviously metaphorical inches from genuine explosion but still making a visible effort of self-restraint. "Sabotage is not a game, for crying out loud! What are these idiots playing at? What's their _purpose_? Who are they, for that matter?"

Kinch didn't answer; it was all rhetorical anyway. He was thinking along the same lines himself: these bridges didn't need to be destroyed, not now at any rate: no ammunition convoy was scheduled for months, nobody important was to cross the Franconian Saale. What was worse, blowing up two bridges in such quick succession was bound to attract some very unwanted attention from the Gestapo, not to mention the usual patrols scouting the area.

Whichever way you chose to look at it, these mysterious unknown saboteurs were not doing them nor the Underground any favour.

Hogan's lips were still white with anger, his fists still balled up tight, but his stiff shoulders soon sagged into the familiar laid-back posture that sometimes made Kinch wonder how he had gotten away with it in a more seriously military environment.

"Right," he said slowly, to all appearances quite normal now except for the fury burning in the piercing dark eyes, "you can answer Puss in Boots we don't know who did it, why, or how they did it, but we'll be keeping an eye open. Tell them to do the same, too. And if they ever catch those mystery bombers, I'll want a word with them. Non-negotiable," he added as Kinch finished tapping the message with a speed born of habit.

Kinch would have smiled if the situation hadn't been so serious. The colonel's last sentence had a particularly ominous ring for whoever had been bombing the bridges. The move was a stupid, useless one at best, but with the three flyers as well as Carter, LeBeau and Newkirk out there, it could get upgraded to criminally dangerous awfully fast.

And Colonel Hogan did not take kindly to anyone endangering his men. At all.

_Over – and – out._

When the line went silent, Kinch crossed his arms and looked up at Hogan.

"Colonel," he said quietly, "if they were still on the north bank when the bridge exploded, it will take them hours to find another one. There's no ford in this area and the nearest bridge is in Fuchsstadt – that's miles from Hammelburg."

"I know." Hogan began pacing. Definitely not a good sign. "Schultz is still in town, right?"

"He's due back in the morning with the new truck."

"Any chance he might be delayed?"

"Not really. Fuchsstadt is on his way, and the Westheimer bridge is still intact."

Hogan mechanically tapped a quick rhythm with his fingers on his upper arm while the cogs turned in his head. "Schultz is supposed to be here at …"

"Zero six thirty."

"Right. So Langenscheidt is gonna conduct the first roll call instead of him." He still paced, but a faint gleam of hope had lit up in his eyes. "We'll just have to stall until Gordon blows up the cooler. Klink will probably confine all prisoners to the barracks after that – I know it won't be a picnic," he added, preemptively cutting across Kinch's remark that the heat would likely cause problems, "_but_ it will buy the boys time to come back before sundown."

"And …" Kinch hated that question with every fibre of his being, and he hated to be the one who had to voice it, but somebody had to. "What if they don't?"

Hogan's eyes darkened. "Then tomorrow night we go out and look for 'em. They may be alive, or dead, or injured, or not hurt at all – at least we'll know for sure. And if we happen to bump into those amateur saboteurs along the way, I'll kick their rump all the way to London to teach them to play with explosives." He looked at his watch. "I'm getting Addison to help Gordon – he's serious, quiet, and nothing on God's green earth can get him to chat if he doesn't feel like it. Perfect assistant."

He climbed back up the tunnel to Barracks 2, leaving Kinch alone at the radio.

As he waited – like he already had for an unaccountable number of hours – he thought that if _he_ ever got face-to-face with whoever had been blowing up those bridges, getting ass-kicked into next Sunday would be the least of their worries.

* * *

><p>As he walked behind McBride and Newkirk, trying to put as little weight as possible on his right foot, Squadron Leader Bannister tried to remember the last time he had felt so tired.<p>

He couldn't, so he quickly gave up and focused on what he could hear and see.

The forest had gone from almost silent barely an hour ago, to positively humming with life, the cries of dozens of unseen birds and various other creatures almost drowning out the sound of the bushes rustling as they brushed by and their footsteps on the moss, pine needle and twigs-covered ground. The upside was that German patrols would have a harder time hearing them; the downside was that if a patrol did happen to pass nearby, _they_ would probably not hear them until it was too late.

The reason for the sudden burst of wildlife activity had probably something to do with the fact that light – a sluggish, lazy kind of light – was seeping between the trees, turning what they could see of the sky a slightly lighter shade of blue in the east. Soon it would be light enough for Bannister to check his watch. He quickened his pace, uneven as it was.

Fortunately, they seemed to have arrived at the top of a slight rise in the landscape; a little bit of downhill would do them a world of good.

It also meant that they could make out the lights and the watchtowers of what looked like some kind of camp, somewhere along the south road.

"Hey, I can see me house from here," came Newkirk's sarcastic voice as he stopped and wiped his brow – the heat was rising from a ground that night had failed to truly cool, the promise of yet another sweltering hot day. When Bannister came up to him, he saw the corporal looking more serious than his tone suggested. "Blimey, that's far. It'll take us at least an hour to get there."

"Wish we could hitch a ride," Carter muttered. Up close, he looked dead on his feet. Newkirk rolled his eyes.

"Smashing idea. Let's just stick out our thumbs, shall we, and maybe we can hop on a magic carpet or something."

Carter shrugged. "I don't know about a magic carpet, but there's a truck coming up the road. Maybe we could do something."

Everybody turned to stare at him, then ran half-crouched to the road, dropping to the ground to avoid being seen. Sure enough, there was a lorry in the distance, driving along the long, straight road at a rather leisurely pace.

"What's that lorry doing here?" Dickins whispered, stretching his shoulders after laying a still-unconscious LeBeau on the ground. "I thought the road only led to that Stalag we just saw."

Bannister shot him a brief surprised look. For all that Dickins' foot appeared to have permanent quarters in his mouth, he knew his maps like nobody else.

"It does," said Newkirk, squinting at the lorry, his brows knitted in thought. "Either the Gestapo's paying Klink a dawn visit, or …"

"Newkirk – it's Schultz!" Carter exclaimed suddenly. The corporal stared at him with narrowed eyes.

"You sure, Andrew?"

"Of course I'm sure! Don't you see him?"

"Not all of us have such keen eyesight, Sergeant," Bannister said dryly. He turned to Newkirk, who had a calculating look about him and wore the beginning of a wicked grin. "What are you thinking about? That you can overpower this man and take the truck? We don't even know how many Germans are in the back."

Newkirk rolled his eyes, making Bannister wonder if he knew just how close to insubordination he was skirting.

Knowing the type, he most likely did, and didn't give a damn.

"Overp—sir, if this is who Carter says it is – and he's got a good pair of eyes on him, me mate has – we only need to ask nicely." He dropped the sarcasm, got to his feet and picked up a dead branch that lay nearby, then tossed it in favour of another. "But since we're a little short on time, I think I'll just remind dear old Schultzie of the hazards of the road. Terribly dangerous thing to do, driving a lorry in the middle of nowhere." He finally chose a thick dead branch, and looked straight at Carter. "Andrew – Piccadilly. Follow his lead, you lot."

You had to admire the man's gall, Bannister thought as he watched him creep closer to the road without a single glance back, gripping his piece of dead wood. Here he was, a corporal, basically ordering two ranking officers to obey a sergeant, and he was doing so with the utmost confidence that they would do it without a second thought.

It occurred to him with a no small amount of frustration that he just could not decide whether Corporal Newkirk would make a terrible officer, or a damn good one.

McBride was smiling slightly. _Well. Here's him won over now_.

Dickins' voice brought him back to reality. "Who's Schultz?"

Carter hesitantly looked from Newkirk (barely visible between the trees) to McBride and Bannister and finally back at Dickins, and said, "Well, we're almost there now, so guess I might as well tell you. Schultz is the Sergeant of the Guard at Stalag 13, and that's where we're going."

Dickins' jaw all but hit the ground. McBride's smile froze.

Bannister's heart leaped in his throat, and his stomach clenched into a hard, tight ball. Gritting his teeth to block out the howling in his head (a mess of '_Spies!_', '_Traitors!_', '_Why the hell didn't they shoot us?_', '_I'll never talk!_' and '_What!_'), he whipped out his gun and pointed it at Carter, whose eyebrows and hands went up and he exclaimed, "No, wait – it's not like that at all!"

Dickins' gaze jumped from Carter to Bannister, obviously quite upset at this unexpected new development but not quite daring to decide how he felt about it just yet. McBride's face was much less of an open book (as was the norm with him) but his chest rose and fell at an unusually fast pace, and his brown eyes betrayed his own uncertainty.

"You say your orders are to take us to a prisoner of war camp," snapped Bannister, himself unsure but keeping his gun steadily trained towards Carter, who gulped and squinted at it to the point of going slightly cross-eyed. "Exactly how is this 'not like that'?"

Carter opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Bannister became aware of a slight change in the atmosphere, but he could not quite pinpoint it. At least, not until he followed McBride's downward gaze and realised somebody was pressing a gun to his side.

Corporal LeBeau had propped himself up on an elbow; his face was still very white under the dried blood and his eyes only half-open, but the expression in them was deadly serious.

"If Carter says 'it's not like that', then it's not like that, whatever it is," he said quietly. "Put the gun away, sir. S'il vous plaît."

It was exactly the sort of confrontation that could have lasted for hours; Bannister's misgivings were too deep, his distrust too strong for him to just lower his gun so easily, and LeBeau looked like he wasn't backing down for all the tea in China.

_What does a Frenchman know about tea, anyway_, was the perfectly absurd thought that crept up into his brain. It did nothing to help.

The sound of a motor drawing closer drew the five men's attention, and Bannister's grip on his gun loosened very slightly in spite of himself in anticipation. From where they sat – or crouched or lay in some cases – they could just make out Newkirk moving lightning-quick.

Exactly what happened in the next couple of seconds remained a mystery for Bannister. There was an ugly thud, the lorry screeched to a halt, and they saw a figure in RAF blue roll bonelessly on the asphalt. It came to a stop a couple of feet further and lay very still.

LeBeau blanched to the lips, and his gun fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. He never noticed McBride quietly pocketing it while he stared fixedly at the unmoving body on the road, looking like he was about to be sick.

"Non," he muttered, scrambling shakily to his feet and immediately dropping to the ground again, "non … non, non … c'est pas vrai … c'est pas possible …"

"Louis, no, wait, it's okay!" said Carter quickly, grabbing him by the shoulders as he started to shake and pointing to the lorry. "He's fine, it's just a diversion so we can hitch a ride with Schultz. See?"

Indeed, as Bannister watched raptly – because frankly he'd rather look anywhere but at the naked shock and grief on the Frenchman's face – the cab door slammed, and a vast German sergeant ran to the front of the vehicle as fast as his bulk allowed him to.

"Mein Gott," he mumbled, "not another deer again, where is that poor animal, I hope it's not – Newkirk?" The voice went higher on the last word, and the chubby face was suddenly an open canvas for a number of emotions, confusion, astonishment and shock being the most obvious. "What on Earth are you doing here? Newkirk?" He lowered himself to the ground – not exactly an easy task – and gently prodded the prone Englishman, lower lip trembling. "Oh, please tell me I haven't killed you, Newkirk … Please …"

It should have been quite sad to watch, but it actually became almost comical when Bannister caught a swift up-thumb gesture of the 'so far, so good' variety from the corporal.

LeBeau seemed to have spotted it, too. He sagged a little, still staring at the road.

"I'm going to kill him," he said flatly.

Dickins opened his mouth – no doubt to point out the glaring fault in his logic – when Newkirk's eyes suddenly fluttered open, and the tragicomedy turned into a farce.

"Ooh, look at the stars, they shine so bright … Gran, is that you in that white light? Didn't know you cut such a fine figure in a nightie, can't say I don't find that a little bit disturbing …"

"No, Newkirk," Schultz pleaded, almost in tears – honestly, it made Bannister feel a bit of a bastard for the uncontrollable laughter rising in his throat. But the faces Newkirk was making were so ridiculous. "Don't go into the light! I have no idea what you were doing here, and I don't care – I swear I won't even report you to the Kommandant if you don't die. Please don't die!"

"Ah, but it's too late, Schultzie," Newkirk said dreamily, smiling at whatever he was pretending to see floating above him. "See, I'm dead already. I'm looking at you from up there as me soul rises … Looks like a bird forgot hisself on your helmet, by the way …"

Carter still had an arm around LeBeau's shoulders; he helped him up gingerly, and they slowly walked to the back of the truck, careful to remain behind the cover of bushes and trees. McBride and Dickins followed, and Bannister did the same after a moment's deliberation with himself. It didn't look as though they were giving up the three of them to the German sergeant; but he still could not see how getting closer to a Stalag could be a good thing.

Meanwhile, Schultz tried to reason with his prisoner.

"You can't be dead yet, Newkirk. You're still talking!"

"Doesn't mean anything, Schultzie. Me gran was in the middle of a lecture when she realised she'd just kicked the bucket. She's calling me now, mate … It's goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square and everything …"

"That's the –" LeBeau began, looking at Carter, who nodded.

"– Signal." The American turned to the three British airmen, and whispered, "Come on."

He climbed into the lorry, then reached out to help LeBeau, then McBride clamber into it, too. Dickins followed deftly; as Bannister joined them, he heard Newkirk say in a puzzled sort of voice, "So. If I'm breathing, and moving, and talking – it means I'm not dead, right?"

Bannister peeked at the scene from behind the seat: only Schultz's head was visible above the bonnet of the lorry, and he was looking down (presumably at Newkirk) with such a wide, delighted, crinkly-eyed smile that it put him in mind of a happy four-year-old. Granted, an enormous four-year-old who sported a stubby moustache, but the impression was dead-on.

"E_xact_ly," he said, visibly quite happy with the Englishman's conclusions. Newkirk's frown was obvious from his voice.

"If I'm not dead … Guess it means I'm alive, then."

"The man missed his calling," murmured McBride somewhere behind Bannister, and judging from his tone he was smiling slightly. "He should have been on the stage."

There was a chuckle that could only come from Carter. "Think he was, at some point."

"Still is."

Bannister glanced behind. LeBeau had an odd expression on his face, as though he had not quite swallowed the fright he'd had but couldn't help smiling, as well.

He went back to watching the front of the lorry, conflicting thoughts arm-wrestling in his head.

_They're bringing us to a prisoner of war camp. They're clearly familiar with Luftwaffe personnel_. And yet he couldn't help but want to trust them; they were resourceful, practical-minded, and most of all showed a loyalty to each other that somehow made it hard to believe they might be traitors – which shouldn't factor at all. _What am I supposed to make of all that?_

Schultz gently helped Newkirk up and into the passenger seat – Bannister was struck by the almost tender care the sergeant exhibited, as though Newkirk wasn't a prisoner to him so much as an overly-adventurous nephew who had ended up getting himself hurt somehow.

When he had ensconced himself behind the wheel and closed the door, Bannister heard him ask thoughtfully, "It's a long way from camp. What _were_ you doing all alone in the woods?"

Newkirk pretended to ponder the question, then answered with a helpless shrug, "I have no idea, Schultz. It's awfully foggy up here – everything's a blank." He paused, and added with a wink, "I can honestly say I know nothing."

Schultz glared mildly at him as he started the engine. "Jolly joker. I'll have to report you, you know, even though I don't like it."

"You do that, Schultzie. I'm sure thirty days in the cooler will do wonders for me ribs." The sergeant actually winced at that. "Mind if I catch a wink or two? I'm rather knackered, to tell the truth."

"No!" Schultz's almost shout made Newkirk jump in his seat, and he wasn't the only one. "It's very dangerous to sleep after an accident," he explained in a lower, almost apologetic voice. "You're not allowed to sleep until a doctor looks at you."

Bannister saw Newkirk shift a little on his seat in search for a more comfortable position, and fail to find one. "First you run me over," he said in mock outrage, "and _now_ you forbid me to sleep? That's it, I'm not feeding you any chocolate for a month."

The conversation continued in this vein, Schultz sounding patient and concerned, Newkirk's answers alternating sarcastic and actually tired, and Bannister quietly made his way back to the others. Dickins was drowsing off, and McBride's teeth clenched at every pothole in the road, despite the fact that their chauffeur was obviously taking great pains to drive as slowly and smoothly as possible. In front of them, Carter and LeBeau sat shoulder-to-shoulder with each other, as though eager to share each other's warmth despite the rising heat.

"Boy, I'm glad we don't have to walk some more," Carter whispered, his voice rough with exhaustion. He yawned, and nudged LeBeau, whose eyelids were drooping. "Don't fall asleep, Louis. You heard what Schultz said."

"Yeah, I did." LeBeau blinked a few times, and muttered something in French Bannister didn't catch.

"You what?" muttered Dickins, making an effort to keep his eyes open. McBride smiled.

"He said, 'If I knew the bloody idiot who blew up the bridge'." He put a hand in his pocket and glanced at Bannister, who realised what he was going to do.

After a few seconds, he nodded in silent accord.

McBride handed LeBeau his gun. "I believe this is yours."

The corporal stared at it, then at McBride, for fifteen seconds straight, and took it, an unreadable expression on his face.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Bannister crossed his arms and frowned. "So. You're taking us to a Luft Stalag, Stalag –"

"Thirteen," Dickins helpfully proffered.

"– Stalag 13, thank you – and yet we should trust you. Why?"

"You don't have to trust us, you just have to do as we say," LeBeau countered in a low voice. Carter gave a weary nod.

"Yeah, this ain't our first rodeo. We do stuff like that all the time."

"Do you get blown up often, too?" Dickins chimed in, half-sarcastic and half-genuine.

"Generally, _we_ do the blowing up." Carter's face suddenly lit up, and he grinned proudly. "And we're not bad at all, actually."

Bannister had no trouble believing him when he looked like that. But … "You really expect us to follow you and obey you blindly?"

"Why not?" There was a spark of stubbornness in LeBeau's eyes that just bordered on insolence without actually going over. Yet. "NCOs do it, it's not that hard. Besides, this is our – our –"

"Turf," Carter completed softly, looking at the patch of cloudless sky that was gradually growing lighter. LeBeau nodded.

"Thanks. This is our turf. We know the area, we know the people, and we know where to go and who to trust. So, yes, until we get to Papa Bear, you follow and obey us."

"We'll be there soon, anyway," Carter added, still looking out the back of the lorry, rubbing his eyes. "That's the Laurel and Hardy bush we just drove past." Three pairs of eyes turned to him with various amounts of bewilderment. Carter looked at them, clearly mystified by Bannister', Dickins' and McBride's reactions. "What? There's a bush right there that looks like a big guy and a skinny guy. We don't go to movies a lot, so we gotta find distractions somewhere."

He noticed LeBeau nodding off and nudged him again.

"Don't fall asleep."

The Frenchman let his head fall on his knees, and muttered a couple of words that made McBride stare at him with his mouth partly open, his eyebrows shooting up. In the pale light his ears appeared to go slightly pink.

No amount of prodding and goading from Dickins could make him translate this time.

* * *

><p>The boys should have been back with the flyers at least an hour ago. This alone meant they had encountered trouble along the way. Hogan didn't know the nature or the extent of said trouble, but he had to make a decision, and fast.<p>

Should he report Carter, LeBeau and Newkirk missing, or stall for a little longer still?

If they were somewhere in the woods, hurt or otherwise slowed down, they would need help to get back to camp. On the other hand, if Stalag guards found them and brought them back to Klink in that state, he was bound to make a connection between them and the blown-up bridges – and even if _he_ didn't, the Gestapo surely would.

Besides, if the guards found the missing prisoners, the three flyers would be screwed.

Hogan resolved to buy more time. If by a stroke of luck they arrived just after the cooler blew up, the guards would be milling about, Klink would be flustered, and they could manage to sneak in unnoticed.

_All in a day's work_.

Hogan looked out the window of his private quarters to the sky lightening over the barracks' roofs, the barbed wire and the trees in the distance, and not for the first time, racked his brain for a plan, an idea, anything that might help things along.

Not for the first time, he got nothing but the wild hope that things would somehow turn in their favour.

There was a hesitant knock on the door. _Doesn't sound like Kinch, Addison, Garlotti, Olsen, Saunders, Baker or Davies – only leaves out Harper, Floyd or Mills_.

"Colonel?"

Bingo. Harper.

"Come in." Hogan already more or less knew that the time for roll call was drawing close – Harper was probably there to tell him Langenscheidt had almost finished with Barracks 1.

The door half-opened, and the English private's blond haired-head popped in, looking as unsure as he sounded. "Sir, Corporal Langenscheidt is heading this way for roll call. Do we tell him Newkirk, Carter and LeBeau escaped?"

Hogan didn't answer right away, and in that second of quiet he heard the bunk bed rising and footsteps running to his door. The next moment, Kinch was there, a bit breathless, but grinning triumphantly.

"Colonel, Gordon's just finished his bomb."

The outlines of a plan took shape in Hogan's mind, and he grinned too, both from sheer relief and gleeful anticipation. Because while on bad days being here was about the cold terror of he and his men eventually being caught and killed (or worse) every time something went wrong, all the while sleeping on crummy mattresses under thin blankets, eating sawdust bread and not even having enough of it, and being watched all the time … On good days, when he managed to wrap his captors around his little finger and trick and deceive them until they didn't know the bottom from the top, he had to admit, it felt damn good.

He stuck his thumbs into his pockets, raised his head, and grinned his battle grin.

"Gentlemen – it's showtime."

* * *

><p><span>Translationsnotes:

_Private (trained)_: in the Canadian Air Force, there were/are three different Private ranks: recruit, basic, and trained. A Private (trained) is the only one to wear rank insignia (one chevron).

_S'il vous plaît_: "If you please"/"Please". The "vous" is somewhat formal; if he was speaking to one of his friends, he'd say "s'il **te** plaît".

_C'est pas vrai … c'est pas possible …_: "It's not true … It's not possible"/"This can't be happening …" The correct form should be "c**e n'**est pas vrai", and in narration it's how it should appear, but people say it, and it's found its way in written dialogue here and there for quite a while. French being a pretty rigid language, it's one of the few written concessions to oral speech.

_Mein Gott_: "My God."

_You what?_ is a British equivalent to "Say what?" or "Come again?", more common in the North of England than in the South.

And one of the perks of being a Frenchwoman writing a story in English that mentions certain French _bad_ words without actually saying them is that … I know exactly what LeBeau said that made McBride stare at him :D It's nothing against Carter, though, it's more like a general "Bloody hell" kind of thing. Do you want to know, or do you prefer to let your imagination fill the blanks?

I feel tempted to point out that Carter isn't stupid by a long shot; just a little quicker to trust fellow Allied airmen than the others, and prone to let his mouth get the better of him sometimes. I get the impression from watching the show that he tends to speak before he thinks. Hence his telling the three British airmen where they're headed.

This might be the chapter I had most fun writing, for a few reasons – the most obvious being Newkirk's hammy scene with Schultz. That one practically wrote itself.

Hope you liked! Next chapter same time next week :o]


	6. Anything Goes

**Author's note**: since the Papa Bear Awards results are due sometimes during the next week(end) and I haven't done it yet, I want to give my most heartfelt thanks to everyone who voted to nominate _Soul Food_. I was floored, and touched and flattered beyond words seeing these two words in so many categories (I mean, _five_! Wow!), when about five months before I was convinced that my writer's block was here to stay another year at least. So, whether _Soul Food_ wins anything or not, thank you _so_ much for the nominations. You made me smile so wide for so long my face muscles hurt for a while :o)

_Anything Goes_ is a great song by Cole Porter (who's probably my favourite jazz composer/writer of all time); I love every interpretation of the song I've heard, but my favourite is undoubtedly the pseudo(?) Chinese version at the beginning of _Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_. Silly, but I love it.

_Disclaimer:I own the five British flyers, Private (trained) Gordon-Lyons, and Private Solf (and possibly his old mum, but I'm not sure I want to take the credit for her). Everything and everyone else has absolutely nothing to do with me and I of _course_ intend to put them back when this story is done and – OH, LOOK! A DISTRACTION!_

Hrm. Enough chitchat, on with the show! Er, story :P

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 6: Anything Goes**_

Sergeant Harry Olsen was so used to being Barracks 2's 'outside man' that, of all the guards in Stalag 13, only Schultz regularly called him by his name – _and_ he still got it wrong at times. It got tiresome, sometimes, being known as the most undistinguished, nondescript set of features in camp, but it had its perks. One of them was that anybody could fill in for him at roll call; Schultz _might_ notice, but Langenscheidt never would. At least, that was the Colonel's gamble.

He ran along the tunnel to the cooler and up the ladder, and opened the trapdoor. The two airmen – a flight sergeant and a corporal – were sitting on the bench, leaning on each other as they slept.

Olsen grinned, and cleared his throat.

Both started awake and leapt apart with varying amounts of embarrassment.

The flight sergeant – Murray, Hogan had said – was tall and thin, with sharp cheekbones and short dark hair; he ran a hand over his unshaven face and immediately looked alert. Berkowitz , the corporal – a slight, fair-headed young man with a pointy nose and long, nervous hands – spent a couple of seconds rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"We haven't got much time," Olsen whispered urgently after a quick introduction. "Call the guard and pester him – tell him you want breakfast or something – and try to get him out of here. Go, now!"

Berkowitz looked about to ask something, but Murray nodded vigorously and strode to the door.

"Oi!" he shouted at the top of his lungs – which was saying something. "Last time I was captured, the Krauts remembered to feed us. If you can't be arsed to make us breakfast, at least bring a cup of tea or something."

They heard footfall in the corridor that stopped in front of the door. The flap slid open, and they got a sliver of Private Günter Solf's wide eyes. Actually, Murray and Berkowitz did, because Olsen was flat against the wall next to the door to avoid being seen.

"Was? You want breakfast – Frühstück?"

"Yeah, frushtuck –" Olsen, who spoke pretty good German, had to wince a little at the (probably intentionally) terrible pronunciation "– and make it snappy, too. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday morning, and Corporal Berkowitz here is famished enough to start nibbling on his shoes."

Private Solf frowned uncertainly.

"I can't leave my post. I'd get shot."

"Nobody's asking you to leave your post," Berkowitz piped up in a calm, reasonable tone, drawing a surprised glance from Murray. "But perhaps you could go over to the guard at the door and ask him to bring us some coffee. Or get someone to do it." He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. "The flight sergeant won't say it, because he's got his pride and everything, but once in a while he faints if he doesn't get enough sugar – I think he could even die if he went without sugar for too long. It's a terrible condition, but he hates telling anybody about it."

Both Olsen and Murray stared at the young corporal, quite taken aback.

Solf's eyes misted over. "Meine alte Mutti, she is the same."

Berkowitz nodded knowingly. "Does she keep it to herself until it's too late as well?"

It was difficult to tell from seeing only his eyes, but Olsen thought Solf cringed.

"Not really, no. She yells at me a lot." He paused. "I will see what I can do."

They listened to his retreating footsteps in stunned silence, then Murray turned to Berkowitz with a short, incredulous laugh. "Lad, I don't know if I should give you a clip on the ear or a bloomin' medal. But that was clever."

Berkowitz looked down, his cheeks flushing, but he was grinning. "Thanks, Flight Sergeant."

"Well done," said Olsen quickly. "No, we haven't got much time. Take off your jackets and hats and leave them on the floor; then follow me." He opened the trapdoor and held it for Murray and Berkowitz to climb down; he still had a hand on the ladder when Private Gordon-Lyons came hurtling toward him as fast as he dared, holding a box.

"Wait, wait, coming through –" Gordon paused as Olsen opened the trapdoor again, and grinned at him, panting. "You know, sarge, it's really a shame that Sergeant Carter won't be there to see this. This'll be a thing of beauty."

"I'm sure of it, Gordon," Olsen replied dryly as the kid hopped up the ladder. "When you tell him he'll be very proud. Now go!"

Gordon disappeared up the ladder, still smiling.

Olsen turned to Murray and Berkowitz, who were staring at the maze of tunnels around them with the same astonished look on their faces.

Murray recovered first. "What is – this is just – exactly what _is_ this place, really?"

Olsen grinned. _So _that_'s how Colonel Hogan feels when he delivers those one-liners_.

"Welcome down the rabbit hole, fellas."

* * *

><p>It had to work, Colonel Hogan thought as he watched the Barracks 2 men (plus four others 'borrowed' respectively from Barracks 3, 6, 7 and 10) milling around poor Corporal Langenscheidt, yawning, scratching, grousing, bustling about the coffee pot on the stove and being generally obfuscating and uncooperative. There were good at that – probably the best.<p>

Four full minutes had come and gone since Olsen had gone to fetch the airmen from the cooler, and three since Gordon had run off with his bomb in a box, still muttering to himself about guncotton, cordite and ballistite. Addison had taken again his place in Barracks 2; when Hogan had asked him how the bomb-making had gone, he had shrugged and made a very expressive 'who knows?' kind of gesture, and that had been the end of the conversation. Private Frank Addison wasn't a talk a lot kind of guy.

Langenscheidt was still trying to get things to quiet down, apparently having failed to realise the rifle he had been holding a few minutes ago had been replaced by a mug of ersatz coffee which he clutched in his right hand, using the left to point and count.

"Sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn, sechzehn … No, wait, there should be _fifteen_ of you! You – Saunders – you moved again!" he moaned, as Saunders opened wide, innocent eyes that spelled 'who, me?' in big bright letters. Since he was over six feet tall and about as large in the shoulders, the effect was anything but harmless, which he was probably aiming at.

"I'll have to do it again … Okay, eins, zwei, drei, vier …"

Hogan watched the organised chaos with a connoisseur's appraising eye, his own mug of coffee in hand; looking out the window near the sink he saw a truck drive past the gates and into the camp. _Looks like our Sergeant of the Guard is back in business_.

A small but niggling idea made its way around his mind, and he crept up on Langenscheidt, who jumped when he lay a hand on his shoulder.

"I'll be back, Langenscheidt, you can count me as present and accounted for."

Before the flummoxed corporal could do anything more than open his mouth, close it and open it again, he strode across the barracks and out the door toward the truck.

He almost stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Newkirk in the passenger seat, looking like something Hell had swallowed and spit out again because it didn't like the taste. Relief and worry fought in his head; urgency won.

_T minus one minute and fifty seconds, if Gordon's bomb is on time_.

"Hey, Schultz," Hogan said, forcing his voice to its usually jaunty, cheerful tone. "How was that furlough? Did you bring a souvenir?"

Schultz rolled his eyes, looking quite preoccupied. "Colonel Hogan, I don't know what happened. Newkirk was on the road, and –"

"Oh, Schultz, thank God you found him. He's been sleepwalking something terrible lately." Hogan faked surprise, but the relief was genuine. He leaned across Schultz to stare at his passenger. "Jeez, Newkirk, you look like roadkill."

The remark got the deadpan look it deserved before Newkirk noticed the actual concern behind the sarcasm. One thing to be said about the English corporal: he had always been quick on the uptake.

"Actually that's a fair account of what happened," he said, shooting a dry look at Schultz, who went bright red and twiddled his fingers in his lap. "Had a little encounter with the bonnet of his lorry, to tell the truth." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "They're all in the back, Colonel."

"All of them?" Hogan asked sharply. Newkirk nodded, a perfectly serious look flitting across his face so fast Hogan could have missed it if he had blinked. "They're pretty banged up. It's all gone a bit pear-shaped, sir."

"You okay?"

"Been better."

_Really not okay, then_. Hogan frowned, and looked at his watch. _T minus one minute and three seconds_.

He spotted McLean and Cavanagh leaning against one of the walls of Barracks 3, and made a discreet gesture. The next moment, they were leaning against the door of the truck as they chatted amiably with Schultz, who tried unsuccessfully to open the door and get out of the truck.

"Cooler's gonna blow in a minute," Hogan muttered to Newkirk, who grimaced.

"Thought I'd had me share of explosions for a week."

"I'll give you a lollipop. Get out as soon as it's safe, and look like you just took the blast."

"Roger that, sir."

Hogan quickly walked to the back of the truck, and peered inside. Five pairs of tired eyes met his.

His first look was for his men, as usual, and he was definitely not happy with what he saw. Carter was one big bruise, and even as he sat he looked way too stiff not to be sore from head to toe; LeBeau had blue shadows under his eyes and dried blood all over one side of his face. Both appeared close to passing out.

In a nutshell, they looked like crap, and the three flyers – a stout squadron leader, a tall ginger-haired flight lieutenant with his left arm in a sling and a round-faced sergeant – fared little better.

It must have been a _very_ long night for them, too.

Carter brightened up and opened his mouth, but Hogan raised a hand to cut short the long-winded sentence he knew was coming.

"No time," he said shortly. "The cooler's blowing up in a few seconds to cover for your colleagues' –" he stared directly at the flyers, who looked up, hope rising in their eyes "– escape. When it does, you run to _this_ barrack and you let the men take over. If you play this right, nobody outside of us will even know you ever set foot in this camp. You got all that?"

"Yes, sir," the squadron leader replied firmly.

"Good. You two," he told Carter and LeBeau, "follow me."

Once they had clambered out of the truck – with some difficulty – Hogan gave them the same instructions he'd given Newkirk, and strode alone to the cooler, where Collins was engaged in lively conversation with Private Solf.

"Well, Solf, what's got you here, away from your post?" Hogan kept his voice friendly and as innocent as possible, but shot a glance at Collins that said 'It's all right, I got this'; Collins took the hint and hightailed it. "I thought the cooler was the place to be these days, all nice and cold."

The wistful expression on Solf's face would not have been out of place on a kicked puppy.

"Colonel Hogan, it's even worse in there than outside. During the day sometimes I feel faint –" He trailed off, and his eyes widened in alarm. "Ooh, the prisoners! I left them alone!"

"Don't worry," Hogan said in his best placating tone, taking a tiny step back and watching Solf do the same without thinking, "I don't think leaving a couple of guys for two minutes will get you in trouble. It's not like they're going to start a tunnel through concrete, right?"

To his surprise, the calm, soothing voice didn't work. Solf's dismay was still evident.

"It's not that, Colonel Hogan! One of them has to have sugar, otherwise he could faint, and even die! Kommandant Klink will probably have me shot if one of the men in the cooler dies while I am there, and then the Gestapo will probably shoot me again –"

Hogan stepped back again. Solf stepped forward again, eager to make his point come across.

"Relax, I'm sure there's something you can do." Solf eyed the mug he was still holding. Hogan followed his gaze and made a contrite grimace. "Sorry, I take my coffee black." He gulped some of it down and levelled a squint at the guard. "I take it the boys are still busy will roll call, then."

The expression on Solf's face was the perfect illustration of the complex concept known as 'huh'.

"Was?"

"Well, yeah, I told a couple of our guys to bring a bit of breakfast to the poor unfortunate souls in the cooler. They're entitled to a bit of human decency before the Gestapo gets a hold of them, hmm?"

Relief flooded over Solf's face. It was like watching the sun rise.

At this precise moment, the cooler exploded. Hogan threw himself on the ground, knocking Solf over as well.

Since he had been shot down – and even more since the start of Operation Unsung Heroes – he had witnessed dozens, maybe more, of explosions. Some had been loud, hot, blinding, ear-splitting; some he had watched from a distance, unable to keep the grin from his face; some he had seen first-hand, and had stood up later brushing snow, dirt or leaves from his clothes and spitting a mouthful of earth because somehow he could never quite avoid literally biting the dust …

This one was rather tame, all things considered. When he raised his head from the ground and glanced at the cooler, he saw that the structure was still pretty much intact; only the south-west corner was partially missing, pieces of concrete and iron strewn about the area as far as the motor pool. There were a few dummy rounds, too – probably a last-minute idea of Gordon's – and Hogan couldn't help but pale a little at the thought of the damage these empty casings could have done if somebody had been close enough. He would _definitely_ have to have a word with the kid.

To his relief, he also spotted three inert figures lying face down a couple of yards from the new hole in the cooler wall. They had the unconscious act dead-on; if he hadn't been the one who ordered them there he could have easily believed that they had just been knocked down – and out – by the blast of the explosion. They weren't even coughing from the smoke.

He spit a mouthful of dirt – _damn, I really should work on this diving to the ground thing_ – and brushed the dry dust off his jacket. Beside him, still flattened on the ground, Solf slowly raised his head to stare at the cooler, his mouth open and his eyes bugging out.

"Meine Güte!" he said feebly.

Hogan stuck one finger in his ear – the boom had not been that loud, but he and Solf had been standing pretty darn close – and when he got it out he heard hurried footsteps slide to a halt near him.

Kommandant Klink was wearing his unbuttoned jacket on his undershirt, and seemed to have left his cap, his monocle and his voice behind. He had never looked more like a fish out of water than he did now, mouth opening and closing wordlessly as he gazed at the extent of the disaster.

"Colonel Hogan," he finally uttered in a stunned voice, "what on Earth happened here?"

Hogan bent to retrieve his cap – noting with a bit of annoyance that the dust made it look more white than brown – and picked up a cartridge lying nearby.

"Well, Kommandant, remember when you had part of the guards' ammunition stored in the cooler to keep it out of the heat? Turns out it wasn't the best idea."

Klink stared at the casing, then at him, and his face fell.

"But it was _your_ idea!"

"Hey, I'm the prisoner here, I'm entitled to making mistakes every now and then! What do you think landed me here in the first place?"

"_Ho_gan …"

Klink's voice was reaching the familiar reedy pitch it did when he was losing his ground, and Hogan was quite ready to make him sink even further, when Solf sidled between the two colonels and timidly pointed to a spot a few yards away.

"Um, sorry, Herr Kommandant – Colonel Hogan – I think there's, um, there's –"

Both men followed the shaking finger to the three unmoving bodies. Hogan composed his features into an expression of shock and worry; Klink's mouth fell open and he went a shade paler.

"Hogan, what were these men doing here?"

"I told them they could bring something to eat to Private Solf and the prisoners in the cooler. Gosh, I hope they're all right …"

"Solf?" Klink turned around to the guard, who looked like he could have done without the colonel's attention but rallied magnificently.

"That's right, Herr Kommandant. He was just telling me this when the cooler exploded. The prisoners said –"

"Goodness, the prisoners," Klink muttered. "Solf, go take a look in the cooler and check for … survivors."

"Ja—jawohl, Herr Kommandant." Solf reluctantly shuffled back to the cooler, obviously dreading what he would find.

Hogan strode to his men and pretended to check for signs of life while Klink hovered nearby, eyeing the blood on LeBeau's head with great distaste – mingled, to his credit, with a little sympathy.

"Are they alive, Hogan?"

"Only just." It was very easy to let his concern seep through in his voice, and it was apparently so effective that Klink appeared rather unnerved by his unusual display of emotion.

Unless the reason for it was the blood. One glance at it and he looked ready to bolt at the first opportunity – which he found quite quickly.

"I'm, er – I'll arrange for an ambulance. We can't have prisoners dying because German ammunitions went off, it's – it's just not done. Too much paperwork, for a start …" He stood there awkwardly for three or four seconds more, then walked to his office, visibly shaken up.

Just as he left, Private Solf reappeared, looking quite green about the gills and so openly distraught Hogan didn't even have the heart to rib him.

"Well, Solf?" he asked gently. "Did you find the prisoners in the cooler?"

Solf shuddered. "What's left of them."

Hogan winced in sympathy, at least a third of it sincere. "Look at it this way: nobody will blame you for this. I mean, what could you have done, throw yourself in front of the ammo crate?"

Solf hung his head, not looking any less glum.

"Danke, Colonel. Excuse me, I have to report to the Kommandant that the two prisoners were –" he gulped "– blown up to bits."

As he walked away, shoulders drooping as if carrying the weight of the world, he was almost knocked over by Schultz, who ran over to Hogan, shock and genuine anguish written clearly all over his face.

"Colonel Hogan, is it true, what I heard? It –" His gaze fell on Newkirk, LeBeau and Carter, who still hadn't moved.

It was fortunate that Newkirk was facing away from Schultz, because he was grinning from ear to ear and barely keeping a particularly bad case of the giggles (at least some of it from delayed reaction, Hogan suspected) in check. LeBeau's eyes were partly open, and although he did blink from time to time, the effect was unnerving and slightly creepy. Only Carter looked exactly like he was supposed to look – eyes closed, silent, and absolutely still.

"What were they doing here?" Schultz finally asked, puzzlement momentarily winning over worry.

Even if it _was_ a bit low, pulling at Schultz's heartstrings was too tempting; besides, Hogan threw all qualms to the wind on general principles when his men were at stake.

He shook his head and bit his lip.

"It's my fault, Schultzie. I told them to bring breakfast to the guys in the cooler. If I'd known …"

"If you had known, you wouldn't have sent them here," Schultz said in a patient, gentle tone that might have worked had Hogan been actually feeling low. "It's not your fault, Colonel. It was nice of you, to think about the prisoners in the cooler." His eyes fell on Newkirk – Hogan squeezed his shoulder as a warning, and the Englishman finally went still – and he frowned. "Colonel Hogan, I'm pretty sure the Engländer was sitting with me in the truck when the cooler blew up. I know I saw him open the door _after_ the boom."

Hogan ignored the small whisper of anxiety that flitted across his mind, and looked at the sergeant straight in the eye.

"You _sure_ you saw him, Schultz?"

Schultz stared at him, then at Newkirk, and at LeBeau and Carter a few feet away, with the funny look in his eyes that sometimes made Hogan think he was a lot less stupid than he appeared.

"The Kommandant called for an ambulance, didn't he?"

"He said he would," Hogan answered calmly. Schultz nodded.

"I saw nothing. He was there with the cockroach and the Amerikaner." Schultz picked up his rifle, and struggled to his feet. He still looked worried, and, to Hogan's surprise, a little sad as well. "I don't know what sort of monkey business you are up to, Colonel Hogan, and I don't _want_ to know, but I don't like it when the boys get hurt. They're nice boys, and they're prisoners – they don't have to fight anymore. They shouldn't get hurt like that."

Hogan was taken aback by the seriousness of Schultz's voice. The games and tricks he played were mostly on Klink, although Schultz and he also had their own little routine of obfuscation and deception (however they did gang up on Klink on occasions, showing that even Schultz had an inkling of what sarcasm was about, even if he didn't understand the word). A candy bar here, a game of cards there, bits of information and dissimulation – all in the spirit of the game.

But Schultz's words struck a little too close to home; for a second there, he hadn't been playing the game, and this left Hogan feeling a bit unsettled and rather uncomfortable.

As usual, it didn't last very long. Robert Hogan had always been very good at getting himself together.

Before he walked off, Schultz turned back, and asked in a small voice, "Please tell me you didn't kill the two Engländer in the cooler, though."

Hogan almost laughed, but recovered in time. "Of course we didn't, Schultz. Want to know what we did?"

"Nein, I don't!" The game was on again. Schultz goggled at the colonel in alarm, then gallantly fled to avoid hearing some more dangerous information.

Hogan let his shoulders sag – the long night spent scheming and worrying finally catching up with him – and looked down at Newkirk.

"What the hell happened to you guys? Reader's Digest version only, save the details for later."

The giggles had passed, and Newkirk just looked beat now, but he was still smiling, if a bit grimly. "The Adolf Hitler bridge blew up. We went the long way around, picked up the flyers, and then the Hammelburg bridge blew up, too. Honestly, sir, if Schultz hadn't been driving by when he did …" He trailed off. Hogan stared at him.

"Well?"

"… Guess we would've been in a bit of trouble."

_No kidding_.

Hogan's grip on his shoulder tightened again – this time in reassurance, not warning – and he let out a deep breath.

"You're here now, so are the flyers. That's what matters." He paused, and rolled his eyes. "Stop smiling, Corporal. Remember you're supposed to be half-dead."

"Barely feeling half-alive as it is, sir."

If Newkirk could be his usual cheeky self, he was probably going to be okay. Hogan refrained from grinning (in case guards were watching) and moved on to LeBeau.

"Looks like you boys had a busy night. How are you feeling?"

"Ma tête me fait un mal de chien, mon Colonel."

"Come again?"

"Bad headache. The flyers got out okay?"

"They sure did." Hogan threw a glance toward Barracks 2, where Langenscheidt was in deep conversation with Kinch (who had made sure the German corporal never saw the flyers enter the barracks); then he looked back down, and raised an eyebrow. "Do you really have to keep your eyes open like that, LeBeau? I'm not exactly the squeamish type, but I gotta say it's creeping me out a little bit. You look like the undead."

The Frenchman blinked slowly, then retorted in a tired mutter, "I can't close my eyes. Otherwise I'll just fall asleep, and Carter kept reminding me that it's a bad idea after a head wound."

"Carter's right, but at least blink more often, for God's sake. You look like that when the ambulance guys arrive, they'll think you're dead and leave you here."

Alarm flashed in the dark eyes, making them look a little more alive.

"You wouldn't let them, mon Colonel?"

Hogan considered falling back on sarcasm, but decided not to. Quipping could wait till LeBeau was in condition to appreciate snark again.

"No. I wouldn't." He squeezed LeBeau's shoulder like he had done for Newkirk, then stood up and walked to Carter. "Well, Carter, what's our resident expert got to say about this explosion? The cartridges thing could have been messy, but overall I think Gordon's a promising kid … Carter?"

The sergeant had not moved nor made a sound. Granted, Hogan's voice had been barely above a whisper, but Carter should have heard him at least. And it was really not like him to ignore somebody talking to him, especially his CO.

"Carter?" Hogan asked quietly, kneeling beside him and touching his shoulder gingerly. "Hey, you all right?"

Carter was pale underneath the scratches and bruises, but his breathing was deep and regular, and there was the hint of a smile on his face. Hogan shook his head with a grin.

He was sound asleep.

* * *

><p><span>TranslationsNotes:

_Was?_: What?

_Meine alte Mutti_: my old mum

_Sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn, sechzehn_: seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen

_eins, zwei, drei, vier_: one, two, three, four

_Meine Güte_: my goodness

_Ma tête me fait un mal de chien_: (almost) literally, "My head hurts like a dog"; "My head is killing me."

The expression "roadkill" or "road kill" is probably anachronistic, since it was first recorded in 1972 – but I'm invoking Rule of Funny on this issue ;o)

Only one more chapter to go – to tie up loose ends and answer a few questions … Notably _who blew up the bloody bridges, really?_

Hope you liked :o]


	7. Things Are Looking Up

**Author's note**: I've been a member of FFnet for eleven years today (April 10th), and I can't believe I'm putting the last chapter on my second chaptered story (if _Soul Food_ indeed "counts", being a series of inter-related one-shots). I don't know what it is with this fandom, but it's by far one of the best I've been involved with in eleven years; sure, the show is great, the characters are endearing and the original idea had such a lot going for it in terms of humour and drama, but the _people_ that write and read stories in this corner of the Net are incredible. Which reminds me, I still haven't quite picked up my jaw from the floor at _Soul Food_ getting four awards. "Thank you so much" doesn't convey a tenth of my joy and gratitude, but until I find a better way to say it, it'll have to do.

_Things Are Looking Up_ is another Gershwin song, because it's important to end all this wanton destruction of masonry with something positive and optimistic :o]

_Disclaimer: I created the characters of Alec Bannister, Sean McBride, Jack Murray, Ron Dickins and Eugene Berkowitz, and had a lot of fun writing their adventures. Now that said adventures are over, they and the _Hogan's Heroes_ characters (who apparently belong to CBS, not me) will hopefully be able to catch a break. For about five or ten seconds, of course ;o)_

* * *

><p><strong>Into the Woods<strong>

_**Chapter 7: Things Are Looking Up**_

The Swan Inn in Farnborough had many assets, as pubs went. One of them was its respectability; another was its proximity to the airfield. It was crowded every single night since the beginning of the war. As usual that night, the crowd was a colourful mix of RAF officers, other ranks, and local civilians, playing darts, chatting with the bartender, having a game of pool and generally relaxing around a few pints.

Flight Lieutenant McBride sat at a table with Squadron Leader Bannister, Flight Sergeant Murray, Sergeant Dickins and Corporal Berkowitz, in a quiet corner made all the quieter by the fact that nobody had said a word in the last several minutes. None of them had touched their drinks yet. They were too busy thinking to drink.

After a little while, Dickins took a sip from his lager and asked to no-one in particular, "How many guys do you reckon got out through that place? D'you think somebody we know did?"

They all looked at one another, and Bannister said in a low voice, "Let's put it that way, Sergeant. How many people are you going to tell?"

Dickins shrugged. "None, sir. We've been sworn to secrecy – it's all classified material anyway."

"Exactly." Bannister drank from his brandy. "So there's no way of telling how many boys got back who wouldn't have otherwise."

Silence – relative silence, at least – fell again, and McBride wondered if, like him, they were thinking about the debriefing they had gone through earlier today, right after he and Bannister had been released from the hospital. Both were on sick leave until their sprained ankle and broken arm respectively healed; the others were simply grounded until they were assigned to another plane, and another mission, with the secret, unspoken hope they would be able to keep the old crew together.

At least that way they would have each other to talk to about their trek through Germany to the British submarine. And the tunnels. And the whole Papa Bear operation.

They had stayed two days in the tunnels under the barracks, during which they had been fitted with civilian suits and passports so genuine-looking you would never have guessed they had been forged several yards underground. It had been a couple of hot, uncomfortable days, spent without much sunlight – they couldn't exactly go out of the barracks without attracting unwanted attention from the guards – with the prisoners' humour and generally easy-going attitude the only redeeming feature.

McBride had found Colonel Hogan rather fascinating to watch. He seemed to walk the tightrope of several operations (and cons) at the same time with such disconcerting ease that McBride – and several others, he knew – wondered how he got away with it.

Sheer nerve, reliable instincts and some unholy talent for manipulation played a big part, no doubt.

Spartan living conditions notwithstanding, they had been kept safe, allowed to recuperate (Dickins had slept for fifteen hours straight) and adequately – if a bit blandly – fed. Sergeant Wilson, the medic Newkirk had mentioned, had fashioned a sturdy splint for McBride's broken arm that allowed him a relative freedom of movement, as well as a discreet bandage on Bannister's ankle while advising him to put as little weight as possible on it.

This time, Squadron Leader Bannister had not objected to being ordered about by an NCO. Medical personnel were a special case.

McBride smiled behind the rim of his whiskey glass. He had expected Bannister to be horrified by the apparent lack of military discipline in camp, and in a way, he had not been disappointed. He knew for a fact that Bannister had had a conversation with Colonel Hogan about it (and, McBride suspected, about the appalling behaviour of certain NCOs and their deplorable attitude towards officers).

Hogan must have had the last word, and must have been quite convincing, because Bannister had been strangely silent and thoughtful for a little while after the interview. It had led to a certain amount of speculation on the part of Murray, Dickins and Berkowitz; as usual, McBride had chosen to observe, listen, and keep his thoughts to himself.

Just like he was doing right now.

As he took another sip from his glass, he couldn't help but regret a bit that they left before Newkirk, LeBeau and Carter returned from the hospital. He supposed they would be all right, but he would have liked to shake them by the hand before he and his crew left camp.

In the end, he had dropped a few words to the calm, quiet Staff Sergeant who acted as the main radio operator. Sergeant Kinchloe committed the short message to memory and assured McBride with a smile that the 'boys' would get it.

McBride had found himself liking Kinchloe almost instantaneously. There was a man who understood and appreciated the value of silence – which, for a man whose main job was communication, was rather ironic.

Berkowitz looked up from his ginger ale and said quietly, "I wish we could send them a message – you know, to say thanks."

"Yeah," Dickins chimed in, a little more emphatically. "Also, I'd really like to know who blew up the bloody bridges."

Murray stared at him over his now-cold tea with his best deadpan expression. As it happened, his best was quite good. "Ronnie," he finally said when Dickins returned the stare, "somehow I get the feeling that you fail to grasp the meaning of the word 'classified'."

Dickins let go of his lager to fold his arms across his chest, glaring back mulishly with a twinkle of humour in his eyes. "So? What's it mean, then?"

"Means that the higher-ups will probably know, but for average blokes like you and me it'll be a riddle for the ages. Cheers," he added, raising his cup with an ironic grin. Dickins and Berkowitz did the same, and Bannister rolled his eyes with a small smile he couldn't quite hide.

McBride didn't. He was thinking.

"I don't know about the bridges," he said, frowning slightly. "But we _might_ be able to pass a message."

Bannister glanced at him. "You mean, by the normal channels?"

"Depends on what you call 'normal', sir." The word certainly didn't seem to apply to Hogan's organisation. "But I know a man who knows a man … You know how it goes."

The suggestion made its way around the other four's minds, and each of them nodded their agreement.

Murray raised his cup again, this time without any trace of sarcasm in his voice. "To Papa Bear."

"And his men," Bannister added, raising his own glass.

Dickins followed with a grin. "Best band of crooks and rogues I've ever seen in me life."

"Hope we can see them again after the war is over," Berkowitz finished, a little wistfully.

McBride smiled slightly, and made his own short, silent toast.

_Mòran taing_.

* * *

><p>A storm had finally broken over Stalag 13.<p>

The roofs of the barracks had been fixed during the heatwave, holes had been filled in, so for once water didn't drip through from the ceiling; raindrops just beat down a steady, extremely loud rhythm and streamed down the walls outside. Between the puddles, the ground was covered with a sticky, yellow mud that seemed to get everywhere, even down the tunnels.

After the dry, stifling heat of the past few weeks, though, it was heaven.

This also meant that Klink was much less eager than usual to conduct surprise roll calls. This small luxury would have been a real asset had they been in full business, but as it was, the last couple of days had been quite uneventful – to everybody's relief – as far as they were concerned.

Both London and the Underground had spent half a week trying to figure out what happened. The Adolf Hitler and Hammelburg bridges had only been the start; three other bridges had been blown up since, with no apparent purpose nor reason. Gestapo officers had been running wild trying to figure the bombers' pattern and next moves, arresting people at random and making everybody extremely nervous. Naturally, the Underground had ordered radio silence (barring emergencies) until things quieted down again, and London hadn't sent a word for two days.

As a consequence, Kinch was spending a lot more time than usual above ground – with Baker and Davies manning the radio in case something came up – and, to be honest, he was enjoying it quite a bit. Even though he was, like the others, essentially confined to the barrack, once in a while it felt good to just chat with the guys, play cards with Carter and Newkirk, discuss the finer points of a cochon de lait recipe with LeBeau, and generally just relax amidst casual conversations and activities.

He kept a subtle but keen watch on the trio all the while, and he knew Colonel Hogan did the same. On the whole, they recovered rather well, but Carter's bruises had yet to fade, Newkirk's posture was stiff and awkward, miles away from his usual relaxed slouch – wonder of wonders, this made him actually stand to almost perfect attention during roll calls – and even without the bandage around his head LeBeau wouldn't have looked out of place stepping in for Boris Karloff.

It had been one bad night.

Still, at least this mission was over, and if everyone had not come out unscathed, at least they were all alive and they would get better. That was something.

Carter had made a funny face when he heard Gordon had used his lab, and a couple of days after he got back, he was still rather cross about it. He was not _mad_ (this was Carter, after all – one of the most good-natured men Kinch knew), per se, but looked rather put out.

"I just wish I coulda been there, that's all," he said to Newkirk, who rolled his eyes. "I mean, Gordon's a nice kid, and he _is_ kinda good, but I'm still finding my equipment in weird places."

"Weirder than usual, you mean?" muttered Newkirk with half a smirk, his eyes still on the sock he was mending. The dig was probably just for the hell of it, since he never set foot in Carter's lab if he could help it anyway.

Carter shot him a pretty good attempt at a stony look.

"Yeah, well, how would you like it if somebody messed with the stuff in your locker? Or, you know, Kinch's radio? Or LeBeau's spices stash?"

"They would have to be suicidally stupid, for starters. I swear some of these things are lethal." Newkirk paused, and glanced at the top bunk above the tunnel entrance. "Is he sleeping again, then?"

"No, he's not," came LeBeau's deadpan voice from his bunk where he was rereading a bunch of letters – probably from various girlfriends. Honestly, the guy was as bad as Newkirk. "And for the last time, curry powder is _not_ poisonous. I think you'd like it if you gave it a try."

"Not me, mate," Newkirk retorted. "It's bad enough you can't ever cook decent, proper food like steak and kidney pie or treacle tart with a bit of custard – no way I'm having foreign stuff like that."

"LeBeau's cooking is usually foreign," Carter pointed out reasonably. "Well, to everybody except him, I guess."

Newkirk shrugged.

"Yeah, but curry's about as foreign as you can get. You'll never get an Englishman to say something like 'Ooh, I could murder a curry'. Murder a fish and chips, or a shepherd's, yeah, but a curry? Never." There was a beat, and Newkirk looked at Kinch, as though wondering what they had been talking about in the first place, and how they could have strayed from the original subject so much. "Anyway. Kinch shares his radio just fine, don't you, Kinch?"

"I would if it was my radio," Kinch said with a smile. "Then again, I'm pretty okay with being replaced every once in a while. I see your point, though, Andrew," he added, as Carter shot him a I-can't-believe-you're-siding-with-him look. "It's never pleasant to find that your things have been moved, or tampered with … or used to make coffee."

The pause and the slightly pointed tone on the last few words was deliberate, and Kinch suppressed a grin when LeBeau looked down to throw him a somewhat hurt look.

"Come on, Kinch, it was an honest mistake, and it was ages ago."

"Three months."

"That's what I said, ages," he retorted, shifting to settle himself into his bunk again. Kinch shook his head with a grin, returning to his book. He had already read _The Thin Man_ a number of times, but it was one of those books he liked going back to every now and then. The charm didn't seem to wear off.

"Don't worry, Andrew," he heard Newkirk say in what he probably intended as a placating voice despite the slight sarcastic edge, "I'm sure you're still our go-to expert in blowing stuff up – our favourite resident mad bomber, as it were."

Kinch looked up in time to spot Carter's uncertain glance at the Englishman, obviously unsure whether this was a compliment or not.

The bunk bed entrance rattled open, and Baker's head popped up. "Somebody said something about blowing stuff up?"

"He did," Carter said, jerking a thumb toward Newkirk. "Why?"

"Because London was on the horn just now. They finally know who blew up the bridges, and why."

Everybody in the room stopped talking and turned to Baker, who flushed but didn't flinch. He opened his mouth, but closed it as the outside door opened and Colonel Hogan ran in, soaking wet and dripping water all over the place.

"Well, fellas, there'll be no borrowing cars from the motor pool in a while," he announced, shaking rain out of his cap and brushing his sopping hair from his forehead. "It's muddy all over, even Klink's motorcycle is st—" He broke off, and his eyes fell on Baker, who was hopping out of the tunnel entrance. "What happened, did London call?"

"Yes, sir, they want to speak to Papa Bear immediately," Baker replied firmly, ignoring the stares of practically everyone in the barrack that demanded more information.

Hogan lost no time following him down the tunnel.

Kinch hesitated – after all, it was Baker's shift, and although he was the junior radioman he had to be trusted with responsibilities every once in a while – for about five seconds, and went down the tunnel as well.

The noise from the rain was muffled down there, but still quite audible through the bunk bed entrance, and Kinch could be quite stealthy when he wanted to; neither Baker nor Hogan noticed him approaching. They were all too busy with what they were doing, anyway, Baker listening to the Morse and scribbling away, and Hogan leaning forward with a hand on his shoulder, waiting for the full translation.

When Baker handed him the blue paper, Hogan stared at it, eyebrows raised, then finally burst out, "They've gotta be kidding! Who _are_ these guys?"

Baker started working on the Morse, and Kinch walked up to Hogan.

"Trouble, Colonel?" he asked quietly. Hogan gave a wry smile that was half a grimace.

"I don't think so, not as such, but …"

"There you go, Colonel," said Baker, handing him another paper. Hogan skimmed through the text, eyes darting down the paper in a second, and sniggered humourlessly.

"Well, the boys are gonna love this one." He made to stuff it in his pocket but seemed to think better of it – possibly because his pants were soaked through. "Come on up, this concerns all of us."

The three of them climbed back up the ladder; by then, pretty much everybody was sitting on their bunks or on chairs and stared at Hogan as they came out from the tunnel, waiting for answers to their silent questions.

"London just called," he began. "They figured out what happened the other night – and since."

Newkirk and Carter, in particular, appeared to listen particularly intently.

"All they have to say on the subject," Hogan continued, visibly riled up but unwilling to let his annoyance show through, "is that somebody made a mistake, orders were misinterpreted, and the wrong bridges were bombed. They apologised on the guys' behalf."

A chorus of snickering, muttering darkly, and mumbling "Yeah, right" answered him. Carter looked thoroughly furious.

"Fat lot of good that does us," he said with uncharacteristic anger, grey eyes flashing. "Whoever it was, they really messed up – they could have killed all of us!"

"Are you sure they didn't tell you who's behind this, sir?" Newkirk's voice was low, but cold and promised all kinds of very bad things for the mysterious bombers. The steely glint in his eyes was just as ominous. "Because I'd like to have a word or two with them, up close and personal, if you get my meaning. Or failing that, send them some special treat of Carter's."

"You know, come to think of it, I have just the thing," said Carter, mostly straight-faced but his eyes lighting up with the familiar gleam Kinch knew well. "The sweetest little grenade – it doesn't have to do any real damage, just scare them a little bit …"

"We are _not_ sending anyone grenades, Carter," Hogan interrupted, crossing his arms. The effect was slightly spoiled by the hint of dry humour creeping into his voice. "Better keep that one for a rainy day. You know what I mean," he added, rolling his eyes as Newkirk and Carter simultaneously pointed at the window with the same expression on their faces.

"I'd still like to know what sort of bloody amateurs we're dealing with," Newkirk muttered while Hogan walked to the stove and poured himself a coffee, clearly showing the matter was closed. Baker climbed back down the ladder, and most men returned to what they had been doing, including Kinch who opened up _The Thin Man_ again. "I mean, blowing up one bridge by mistake is one thing – but _five_? That's just … I honestly have no words for just how profoundly stupid this is."

"To be fair, we'd have heard if they had been arrested," Kinch said, looking up from his book and frowning slightly. "So maybe they're not that stupid."

"Or they could be insanely lucky."

Kinch shook his head. "Nobody's _that_ lucky."

"Maybe they're carrying around their weight in rabbits' feet," said Carter, chuckling. Newkirk shot him a sideways glance.

"You know what? It's not a bad idea. Next time LeBeau makes Hasenpfeffer for dinner, we can nick the rabbit's feet and get away with blowing up bridges and stuff scot-free."

Carter stared at Newkirk, probably aware that he wasn't being serious but having trouble sorting out the sarcasm from the genuine. Newkirk had that effect on many people. Even Kinch – no stranger to stone-faced humour – had found deciphering him rather difficult in the beginning.

But he had known him for some time now.

"You're planning to steal potential food from a chef?" he asked quietly, sending an innocent – somewhat – grin Newkirk's way. "Good luck. Oh, wait …"

Nobody did deadpan better than their resident Londoner, and he proved it yet again.

Then something flickered in his eyes, and he glanced at the bunk above the tunnel, shifting on his chair. "You've been silent far too long, LeBeau. Either you're plotting something, or …" He broke off, wincing ever so slightly as the movement didn't agree with his ribs. The flinch almost immediately disappeared behind a slight grin, but it told Kinch everything he needed to know about his friend's state – no matter how fine he said he was, he was going to have to wait a while before going out on missions out of camp. "… You're asleep, aren't you?"

Silence answered him. Guessing that Newkirk was about to get up and check whether he was right or not, Kinch put down his book and beat him to it. After all, all of _his_ ribs were intact, and he was actually mildly curious.

Newkirk was right, as it turned out. LeBeau was fast asleep, right arm dangling limply from his bunk. The letter he had been reading was lying on the floor; Kinch picked it up and put it on top of the others, resisting the temptation to glance at the contents. He also tucked the Frenchman's arm back in his bunk. Part of his job as a sergeant was looking after his men, after all.

The thought that most of the men in question were from different countries and armies didn't enter his mind once.

"Well," he said with a slight smile as he went back to his chair, "I don't think he'll be plotting anything for a while."

Newkirk snorted. "Bet he hasn't heard a word of what the Guv was saying." He tried to peek at the bunk again, but from where he sat he couldn't see much. "Did he look normal to you?" he asked in a would-be offhand sort of voice, going back to his darning as though it didn't really matter whether Kinch answered or not.

This made Kinch smile in spite of himself.

"About as normal as you and Andrew are looking right now – no better, no worse."

"That bad, eh?" Newkirk gave a small smile. "Well. At least the latest batch of flyers are home safe, the London brass don't have a clue, and we're all in one piece – so to speak. Situation normal, then."

"That was real nice of them to send us that 'thank you' message," Carter mused. "The flyers, I mean. Really well-put, too, they said a lot for such a short note. Wonder what that cockaleekie thing was about, though." He looked out the window at the rain falling outside with a thoughtful look on his face. "It's too bad we can't tell them those bridges actually got blown up by mistake, you know, now that we know someone just messed up."

"We don't know _that_ much," Newkirk pointed out.

Carter's face darkened for just a second.

"Yeah, I know. Darn, I wish I knew who's responsible. Even if it's someone we've never seen or even heard about, it's just not right. I mean, suppose they do it again?"

* * *

><p>"So … Plug the green wire in the green button, and the red wire in the red button …"<p>

A stubborn, continuous rain was falling as it had for the past two days, but the absence of wind made it fall straight down, and the umbrella was quite large enough to fulfil its purpose. It was also musty and smelled of old shoes, and the greenish flowery pattern was rather horrendous, but nothing – not snow, not rain, not heat, not darkness, as the poet wrote – could stay Colonel Rodney Crittendon about his duty to King and country.

The old shoe smell _was_ getting dashed distracting, though.

Colonel Crittendon carefully set the detonator into place and straightened up slowly, wincing slightly at the sound of little bones popping in his neck and back. _Blast this awful wet weather_.

Still, he had managed to avoid detection by every German patrol so far, and it was almost over anyway. When he blew up this last bridge, his mission would be accomplished, and all means of transportation and communication would be down within a thirty-mile radius circle around Heidelberg, allowing for the next step of the overall mission.

What the overall mission was, he had no idea, and he had not asked. The officers who had entrusted him with this task had not chosen to disclose the particulars, and he considered that they had been within their rights.

Crittendon set the timer for twenty minutes, and pushed the button for the last time. Filled with the gratifying satisfaction of a job well done, he started up the grassy bank and back to the road.

A few yards later, as he walked by a signpost, he slowed down and stopped, puzzled, as a niggling doubt sneaked its way into his mind. Just to be sure, he turned around to take a good look at the signpost.

_Bayern—Baden-Württemberg_.

Rodney Crittendon prided himself on his memory – he could recall with wistful emotion that quite a few lads got misty-eyed whenever he was in the mood for some Shakespeare – and right now, it was subtly telling him something was not quite right. _What on Earth can it be?_

_Let's see, now_. _All means of transportation and communication … Enough explosives for six bridges …The area around Heidelberg, Bavaria._

Ah. There was, in a manner of speaking, the rub. Heidelberg was most definitely _not_ in Bavaria, when he thought about it. Hammelburg was. But then, Crittendon, thought, pensively rubbing his chin, how was it that he had …

The answer dawned on him like the sun on Nelson's Column on a lovely spring morning.

He had got Heidelberg and Hammelburg muddled up.

Heat – and colour, no doubt – crept up into his cheeks for a moment as he frowned. _Confound it, old boy_, he thought, thoroughly vexed with his blunder. _This is deucedly embarrassing. And me without any explosives left_.

The moment didn't last long, however. He rallied quickly, deciding that he may have made a mistake, but anything that seriously inconvenienced the German war effort was bound to be worth something, after all. And all these now useless bridges had to be a serious inconvenience at the very least, even if they were in the wrong area.

Well, it had to be said in his defence that those German town names sounded remarkably alike, he reasoned. This was unfortunate, quite counter-intuitive, and bound to lead to at least a mistake or two. Perhaps there was something to be said about German efficiency, but when all was said and done, they were only Continentals – they shared borders with the Italian and the French, for Heaven's sake, and it was common knowledge that _they_ could not be accused of over-efficiency.

_Ah, well. What is done is done_. Crittendon decided to shrug it off. He would face the consequences when he got back to London, and in the meantime he had done his part in disorganising Germany. For that, he just had to get to the little town of Hardheim, meet with the local Underground, and they would ship him back to London.

So he was in Bavaria after all. Funny, that. Wasn't that Hogan fellow somewhere in a Stalag in Bavaria?

_Stalag 13_, his memory provided helpfully. Too bad Hammelburg was more than half a day's walk in the opposite direction from Hardheim. He would have rather enjoyed dropping by to say hello. Hogan and his chaps were a rather sloppy, unruly lot, but they meant well, and to tell the truth he had something of a soft spot for them.

_Next time I am conducting spy business in the area, I might pay them a visit._

The thought brought a delighted smile to his face. He was quite looking forward to it.

* * *

><p>THE END<p>

(Golly, those words were good to type!)

So now that the "Exploding Bridges Mystery" is finally explained … Did somebody see it coming? Does it make sense to you? Can you mentally picture Colonel Crittendon's flowery-patterned umbrella? (Don't try too hard – it might be dangerous.)

Translations/Notes:

_Mòran taing_ (Scottish Gaelic): many thanks.

_Hasenpfeffer_: German rabbit- or hare-based stew.

As it happens, Newkirk is dead wrong on the curry thing. Indian-based food was increasingly popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and a lot of Indian restaurants popped up in the UK. Nowadays, it's pretty common to go out for a curry with your mates after the pub closes. And if you've read some of Terry Pratchett's work, you know that there is nothing un-English about saying "I could murder a curry" ;o)

"(…) _These [men and horses] are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed_." —Herodotus, in Histories, about the courier service of the ancient Persian empire. The inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York (_Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds_) derives from this quote.

There really is a Swan Inn in Farnborough. If I ever go there I'll check it out :o]

This last chapter was arguably the hardest to write – wrapping up a story is hard! – but there's something very rewarding in being able to change a story's status from "In-progress" to "Completed".

Hope you liked! It's been a fun ride, hasn't it :D


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